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rHE    MODERN    LIBRARY 

OF    THE    WORLD'S    BEST    BOOKS 


THE    GENEALOGY    OF    MORALS 


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ern Library. 


THE    GENEALOGY    OF 
MORALS 


By    FRIEDRICH    NIETZSCHE 


TRANSLATED  BY  HORACE  B.  SAMUEL,  M.  A. 


K 


BONI  AND  LIVERIGHT 


PUBLISH  ERS 


NEW    YOR  K 


Printed  in 

the  United  States  of  America 


EDITOR'S  NOTE. 

In  1887,  with  the  view  of  amplifying  and  completing 
certain  new  doctrines  which  he  had  merely  sketched  in 
Beyond  Good  and  Evil  (see  especially  Aphorism  260), 
Nietzsche  published  The  Genealogy  0}  Morals.  This  work 
is  perhaps  the  least  aphoristic,  in  form,  of  all  Nietzsche's 
productions.  For  analytical  power,  more  especially  in 
those  parts  where  Nietzsche  examines  the  ascetic  ideal, 
The  Genealogy  0}  Morals  is  unequalled  by  any  other  of 
his  works;  and,  in  the  light  which  it  throws  upon  the  atti- 
tude of  the  ecclesiast  to  the  man  of  resentment  and  mis- 
fortune, it  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  contributions  to 
sacerdotal  psychology. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface ' .,  i 

First  Essay 

"Good  and  Evil,"  "Good  and  Bad"  ...  i 
Second  Essay 

"Guilt,"  "Bad  Conscience,"  and  the  Like  40 
Third  Essay 

What  Is  the  Meaning  of  Ascetic  Ideals?  94 
Peoples  and  Countries 1  7q 


PREFACE. 


i. 


We  are  unknown,  we  knowers,  ourselves  to  ourselves:  this 
has  its  own  good  reason.  We  have  never  searched  for 
ourselves — how  should  it  then  come  to  pass,  that  we  should 
ever  find  ourselves?  Rightly  has  it  been  said:  "Where 
your  treasure  is,  there  will  your  heart  be  also."  Our 
treasure  is  there,  where  stand  the  hives  of  our  knowledge. 
It  is  to  those  hives  that  we  are  always  striving;  as  born 
creatures  of  flight,  and  as  the  honey-gatherers  of  the 
spirit,  we  care  really  in  our  hearts  only  for  one  thing — to 
bring  something  "home  to  the  hive!" 

As  far  as  the  rest  of  life  with  its  so-called  "experiences" 
is  concerned,  which  of  us  has  even  sufficient  serious  inter- 
est? or  sufficient  time?  In  our  dealings  with  such  points 
of  life,  we  are,  I  fear,  never  properly  to  the  point;  to  be 
precise,  our  heart  is  not  there,  and  certainly  not  our  ear. 
Rather  like  one  who,  delighting  in  a  divine  distraction, 
or  sunken  in  the  seas  of  his  own  soul,  in  whose  ear  the 
clock  has  just  thundered  with  all  its  force  its  twelve  strokes 
of  noon,  suddenly  wakes  up,  and  asks  himself,  "What  has 
in  point  of  fact  just  struck?"  so  do  we  at  times  rub  after- 
wards, as  it  were,  our  puzzled  ears,  and  ask  in  complete 
astonishment  and  complete  embarrassment,  "Through 
what  have  we  in  point  of  fact  just  lived?"  further,  "Who 
are  we  in  point  of  fact?"  and  count,  after  they  have  struck, 


ii  PREFACE 

as  I  have  explained,  all  the  twelve  throbbing  beats  of  the 
clock  of  our  experience,  of  our  life,  of  our  being — ah!  — 
and  count  wrong  in  the  endeavour.  Of  necessity  we  re- 
main strangers  to  ourselves,  we  understand  ourselves  not, 
in  ourselves  we  are  bound  to  be  mistaken,  for  of  us  holds 
good  to  all  eternity  the  motto,  "Each  one  is  the  farthest 
away  from  himself" — as  far  as  ourselves  are  concerned  we 
are  not  "knowers." 


2. 


My  thoughts  concerning  the  genealogy  of  our  moral 
prejudices — for  they  constitute  the  issue  in  this  polemic — 
have  their  first,  bald,  and  provisional  expression  in  that 
collection  of  aphorisms  entitled  Human,  all-too-Human. 
a  Book  for  Free  Minds,  the  writing  of  which  was  begur 
Sorrento,  during  a  winter  which  allowed  me  to  gaze  ovt  r 
the  broad  and  dangerous  territory  through  which  my  mind 
had  up  to  that  time  wandered.  This  took  place  in  the 
winter  of  1876-77;  the  thoughts  themselves  are  older. 

They  were  in  their  substance  already  the  same  thoughts 
which  I  take  up  again  in  the  following  treatises: — we  hope 
that  they  have  derived  benefit  from  the  long  interval, 
that  they  have  grown  riper,  clearer,  stronger,  more  com- 
plete. The  fact,  however,  that  I  still  cling  to  them  even 
now,  that  in  the  meanwhile  they  have  always  held  faster 
by  each  other,  have,  in  fact,  grown  out  of  their  original 
shape  and  into  each  other,  all  this  strengthens  in  my  mind 
the  joyous  confidence  that  they  must  have  been  originally 
neither  separate  disconnected  capricious  nor  sporadic  phe- 
nomena, but  have  sprung  from  a  common  rocL  from  a 


PREFACE  iii 

fundamental  "fiat"  of  knowledge,  whose  empire  reached 
to  the  soul's  depth,  and  that  ever  grew  more  definite  in 
its  voice,  and  more  definite  in  its  demands.  That  is  the 
only  state  of  affairs  that  is  proper  in  the  case  of  a  philoso- 
pher. 

We  have  no  right  to  be  "disconnected";  we  must 
neither  err  "disconnectedly"  nor  strike  the  truth  "dis- 
connectedly." Rather  with  the  necessity  with  which  a 
tree  bears  its  fruit,  so  do  our  thoughts,  our  values,  our 
Yes's  and  No's  and  If's  and  Whether's,  grow  connected 
and  interrelated,  mutual  witnesses  of  one  will,  one  health, 
one  kingdom,  one  sun — as  to  whether  they  are  to  your 
taste,  these  fruits  of  ours? — But  what  matters  that  to  the 
trees?    What  matters  that  to  us,  us  the  philosophers? 


Owing  to  a  scrupulosity  peculiar  to  myself,  which  I  con- 
fess reluctantly, — it  concerns  indeed  morality, — a  scrupu- 
losity, which  manifests  itself  in  my  life  at  such  an  early 
period,  with  so  much  spontaneity,  with  so  chronic  a  per- 
sistence and  so  keen  an  opposition  to  environment,  epoch, 
precedent,  and  ancestry  that  I  should  have  been  almost 
entitled  to  style  it  my  "a  priori"— my  curiosity  and  my 
suspicion  felt  themselves  betimes  bound  to  halt  at  the 
question,  of  what  in  point  of  actual  fact  was  the  origin 
of  our  "Good"  and  of  our  "Evil."  Indeed,  at  the  boyish 
age  of  thirteen  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  Evil  already 
haunted  me:  at  an  age  "when  games  and  God  divide  one's 
heart,"  I  devoted  to  that  problem  my  first  childish  at- 
tempt at  the  literary  game,  my  first  philosophic  essay— 


iv  PREFACE 

and  as  regards  my  infantile  solution  of  the  problem,  well, 
I  gave  quite  properly  the  honour  to  God,  and  made  him 
the  father  of  evil.  Did  my  own  "a  priori"  demand  that 
precise  solution  from  me?  that  new,  immoral,  or  at  least 
amoral"  "d  priori"  and  that  "categorical  imperative" 
which  was  its  voice  (but,  oh!  how  hostile  to  the  Kan- 
tian article,  and  how  pregnant  with  problems!),  to  which 
since  then  I  have  given  more  and  more  attention,  and 
indeed  what  is  more  than  attention.  Fortunately  I  soon 
learned  to  separate  theological  from  moral  prejudices,  and 
I  gave  up  looking  for  a  supernatural  origin  of  evil.  A 
certain  amount  of  historical  and  philological  education,  to 
say  nothing  of  an  innate  faculty  of  psychological  discrim- 
ination par  excellence  succeeded  in  transforming  almost 
immediately  my  original  problem  into  the  following  one: 
— Under  what  conditions  did  Man  invent  for  himself  those 
judgments  of  values,  "Good"  and  "Evil"?  And  'what  in- 
trinsic value  do  they  possess  in  themselves?  Have  they 
up  to  the  present  hindered  or  advanced  human  well-being? 
Are  they  a  symptom  of  the  distress,  impoverishment,  and 
degeneration  of  Human  Life?  Or,  conversely,  is  it  in 
them  that  is  manifested  the  fulness,  the  strength,  and  the 
will  of  Life,  its  courage,  its  self-confidence,  its  future? 
On  this  point  I  found  and  hazarded  in  my  mind  the  most 
diverse  answers,  I  established  distinctions  in  periods,  peo- 
ples, and  castes,  I  became  a  specialist  in  my  problem,  and 
from  my  answers  grew  new  questions,  new  investigations, 
new  conjectures,  new  probabilities;  until  at  last  I  had  a 
land  of  my  own  and  a  soil  of  my  own,  a  whole  secret 
world  growing  and  flowering,  like  hidden  gardens  of 
whose  existence  no  one  could  have  an  inkling — oh,  how 


PREFACE  v 

happy  are  we,  we  finders  of  knowledge,  provided  that  we 
know  how  to  keep  silent  sufficiently  long. 


My  first  impulse  to  publish  some  of  my  hypotheses  con- 
cerning the  origin  of  morality  I  owe  to  a  clear,  well-writ- 
ten, and  even  precocious  little  book,  in  which  a  perverse 
and  vicious  kind  of  moral  philosophy  (your  real  English 
kind)  was  definitely  presented  to  me  for  the  first  time;  and 
this  attracted  me— with  that  magnetic  attraction,  inherent 
in  that  which  is  diametrically  opposed  and  antithetical  to 
one's  own  ideas.  The  title  of  the  book  was  The  Origin 
of  the  Moral  Emotions;  its  author,  Dr.  Paul  Ree;  the 
year  of  its  appearance,  1877.  I  may  almost  say  that  I 
have  never  read  anything  in  which  every  single  dogma 
and  conclusion  has  called  forth  from  me  so  emphatic  a 
negation  as  did  that  book;  albeit  a  negation  untainted  by 
either  pique  or  intolerance.  I  referred  accordingly  both' 
in  season  and  out  of  season  in  the  previous  works,  at 
which  I  was  then  working,  to  the  arguments  of  that  book, 
not  to  refute  them — for  what  have  I  got  to  do  with  mere 
refutations — but  substituting,  as  is  natural  to  a  positive 
mind,  for  an  improbable  theory  one  which  is  more  prob- 
able, and  occasionally  no  doubt  for  one  philosophic  error 
another.  In  that  early  period  I  gave,  as  I  have  said,  the 
first  public  expression  to  those  theories  of  origin  to  which 
these  essays  are  devoted,  but  with  a  clumsiness  which  I 
was  the  last  to  conceal  from  myself,  for  I  was  as  yet 
cramped,  being  still  without  a  special  language  for  these 
special  subjects,  still  frequently  liable  to  relapse  and  to 


vi  PREFACE 

vacillation.     To  go  into  details,  compare  what  T  say  in 
Human,  all-too-Human,  part  i.,  about  the  parallel  early 
history  of  Good  and  Evil,  Aph.  45  (namely,  their  origin 
from  the  castes  of  the  aristocrats  and  the  slaves) ;  simi- 
larly, Aph.  136  et  seq.,  concerning  the  birth  and  value  of 
ascetic  morality;   similarly,  Aphs.  96,  99,  vol.  ii.,  Aph. 
89,  concerning  the  Morality  of  Custom,  that  far  older  and 
more  original  kind  of  morality  which  is  toto  ado  different 
from  the  altruistic  ethics  (in  which  Dr.  Ree,  like  all  the 
English  moral  philosophers,  sees  the  ethical  lThing-in- 
itself");  finally,  Aph.  92.    Similarly,  Aph.  26  in  Human, 
all-too-Human,  part  ii.,  and  Aph.  112,  the  Dawn  oj  Day, 
concerning  the  origin  of  Justice  as  a  balance  between  per- 
sons of  approximately  equal  power   (equilibrium  as  the 
hypothesis  of  all  contract,  consequently  of  all  law) ;  simi- 
larly, concerning  the  origin  of  Punishment,  Human,  all- 
too-Human,  part  ii.,  Aphs.  22,  23,  in  regard  to  which  the 
deterrent  object  is  neither  essential  nor  original  (as  Dr. 
Ree  thinks:— rather  is  it  that  this  object  is  only  imported, 
under  certain  definite  conditions,  and  always  as  something 
extra  and  additional). 

5- 

In  reality  I  had  set  my  heart  at  that  time  on  some- 
thing much  more  important  than  the  nature  of  the  theories 
of  myself  or  others  concerning  the  origin  of  morality  (or, 
more  precisely,  the  real  function  from  my  view  of  these 
theories  was  to  point  an  end  to  which  they  were  one 
among  many  means).  The  issue  for  me  was  the  value 
of  morality,  and  on  that  subject  I  had  to  place  myself 


PREFACE 


Vll 


in  a  state  of  abstraction,  in  which  I  was  almost  alone 
with  my  great  teacher  Schopenhauer,  to  whom  that  book, 
with  all  its  passion  and  inherent  contradiction  (for  that 
book  also  was  a  polemic),  turned  for  present  help  as 
though  he  were  still  alive.  The  issue  was,  strangely 
enough,  the  value  of  the  "unegoistic"  instincts,  the  in- 
stincts of  pity,  self-denial,  and  self-sacrifice  which  Schop- 
enhauer had  so  persistently  painted  in  golden  colours, 
deified  and  etherealised,  that  eventually  they  appeared  to 
him,  as  it  were,  high  and  dry,  as  "intrinsic  values  in  them- 
selves," on  the  strength  of  which  he  uttered  both  to  Life 
and  to  himself  his  own  negation.  But  against  these  very 
instincts  there  voiced  itself  in  my  soul  a  more  and  more 
fundamental  mistrust,  a  scepticism  that  dug  ever  deeper 
and  deeper:  and  in  this  very  instinct  I  saw  the  great 
danger  of  mankind,  its  most  sublime  temptation  and  se- 
duction— seduction  to  what?  to  nothingness? — in  these 
very  instincts  I  saw  the  beginning  of  the  end,  stability,  the 
exhaustion  that  gazes  backwards,  the  will  turning  against 
Life,  the  last  illness  announcing  itself  with  its  own  mincing 
melancholy:  I  realised  that  the  morality  of  pity  which 
spread  wider  and  wider,  and  whose  grip  infected  even 
philosophers  with  its  disease,  was  the  most  sinister  symp- 
tom of  our  modern  European  civilisation;  I  realised  that 
it  was  the  route  along  which  that  civilisation  slid  on  its 
way  to — a  new  Buddhism? — a  European  Buddhism?— 
Nihilism?  This  exaggerated  estimation  in  which  modern 
philosophers  have  held  pity,  is  quite  a  new  phenomenon: 
up  to  that  time  philosophers  were  absolutely  unanimous 
as  to  the  worthlessness  of  pity.  I  need  only  mention 
Plato,  Spinoza,  La  Rochefoucauld,  and  Kant— four  minds 


viii  PREFACE 

as  mutually  different  as  is  possible,  but  united  on  one 
point;  their  contempt  of  pity. 


6. 


This  problem  of  the  value  of  pity  and  of  the  pity- 
morality  (I  am  an  opponent  of  the  modern  infamous 
emasculation  of  our  emotions)  seems  at  the  first  blush  a 
mere  isolated  problem,  a  note  of  interrogation  for  itself; 
he,  however,  who  once  halts  at  this  problem,  and  learns 
how  to  put  questions,  will  experience  what  I  experienced: 
— a  new  and  immense  vista  unfolds  itself  before  him,  a 
sense  of  potentiality  seizes  him  like  a  vertigo,  every  species 
of  doubt,  mistrust,  and  fear  springs  up,  the  belief  in 
morality,  nay,  in  all  morality,  totters, — finally  a  new  de- 
mand voices  itself.  Let  us  speak  out  this  new  demand: 
we  need  a  critique  of  moral  values,  the  value  of  these 
values  is  for  the  first  time  to  be  called  into  question — and 
for  this  purpose  a  knowledge  is  necessary  of  the  condi- 
tions and  circumstances  out  of  which  these  values  grew, 
and  under  which  they  experienced  their  evolution  and 
their  distortion  (morality  as  a  result,  as  a  symptom,  as  a 
mask,  as  Tartuffism,  as  disease,  as  a  misunderstanding; 
but  also  morality  as  a  cause,  as  a  remedy,  as  a  stimulant, 
as  a  fetter,  as  a  drug),  especially  as  such  a  knowledge  has 
neither  existed  up  to  the  present  time  nor  is  even  now  gen- 
erally desired.  The  value  of  these  "values"  was  taken  for 
Lrunted  as  an  indisputable  fact,  which  was  beyond  all 
question.  No  one  has,  up  to  the  present,  exhibited  the 
faintest  doubt  or  hesitation  in  judging  the  "good  man" 
to  be  of  a  higher  value  than  the  "evil  man,"  of  a  higher 


PREFACE  ix 

value  with  regard  specifically  to  human  progress,  utility, 
and  prosperity  generally,  not  forgetting  the  future. 
What?  Suppose  the  converse  were  the  truth!  What? 
Suppose  there  lurked  in  the  "good  man"  a  symptom  of 
retrogression,  such  as  a  danger,  a  temptation,  a  poison,  a 
narcotic,  by  means  of  which  the  present  battened  on  the 
future!  More  comfortable  and  less  risky  perhaps  than 
its  opposite,  but  also  pettier,  meaner!  So  that  morality 
would  really  be  saddled  with  the  guilt,  if  the  maximum 
potentiality  of  the  power  and  splendour  of  the  human 
species  were  never  to  be  attained?  So  that  really  morality 
would  be  the  danger  of  dangers? 


Enough,  that  after  this  vista  had  disclosed  itself  to  me, 
I  myself  had  reason  to  search  for  learned,  bold,  and  in- 
dustrious colleagues  (I  am  doing  it  even  to  this  very  day). 
It  means  traversing  with  new  clamorous  questions,  and  at 
the  same  time  with  new  eyes,  the  immense,  distant,  and 
completely  unexplored  land  of  morality — of  a  morality 
which  has  actually  existed  and  been  actually  lived !  and  is 
this  not  practically  equivalent  to  first  discovering  that 
land?  If,  in  this  context,  I  thought,  amongst  others,  of  the 
aforesaid  Dr.  Ree,  I  did  so  because  I  had  no  doubt  that 
from  the  very  nature  of  his  questions  he  would  be  com- 
pelled to  have  recourse  to  a  truer  method,  in  order  to  ob- 
tain his  answers.  Have  I  deceived  myself  on  that  score? 
I  wished  at  all  events  to  give  a  better  direction  of  vision 
to  an  eye  of  such  keenness  and  such  impartiality.  I 
wished  to  direct  him  to  the  real  history  of  morality,  and 


x  PREFACE 

to  warn  him,  while  there  was  yet  time,  against  a  world 
of  English  theories  that  culminated  in  the  blue  vacuum 
of  heaven.  Other  colours,  of  course,  rise  immediately  to 
one's  mind  as  being  a  hundred  times  more  potent  than 
blue  for  a  genealogy  of  morals: — for  instance,  grey,  by 
which  I  mean  authentic  facts  capable  of  definite  proof  and 
having  actually  existed,  or,  to  put  it  shortly,  the  whole 
of  that  long  hieroglyphic  script  (which  is  so  hard  to  de- 
cipher) about  the  past  history  of  human  morals.  This 
script  was  unknown  to  Dr.  Ree;  but  he  had  read  Dar- 
win:— and  so  in  his  philosophy  the  Darwinian  beast  and 
that  pink  of  modernity,  the  demure  weakling  and  dilet- 
tante, who  "bites  no  longer,"  shake  hands  politely  in  a 
fashion  that  is  at  least  instructive,  the  latter  exhibiting 
a  certain  facial  expression  of  refined  and  good-humoured 
indolence,  tinged  with  a  touch  of  pessimism  and  exhaus- 
tion; as  if  it  really  did  not  pay  to  take  all  these  things — I 
mean  moral  problems — so  seriously.  I,  on  the  other  hand, 
think  that  there  are  no  subjects  which  pay  better  for  being 
taken  seriously;  part  of  this  payment  is,  that  perhaps 
eventually  they  admit  of  being  taken  gaily.  This  gaiety, 
indeed,  or,  to  use  my  own  language,  this  joyful  wisdom, 
is  a  payment;  a  payment  for  a  protracted,  brave,  labor- 
ious, and  burrowing  seriousness,  which,  it  goes  without 
ing.  is  the  attribute  of  but  a  few.  But  on  that  day 
on  which  we  say  from  the  fullness  of  our  hearts,  "For- 
ward! our  old  morality  too  is  fit  material  for  Comedy,** 
we  shall  have  discovered  a  new  plot,  and  a  new  possibility 
for  the  Dionysian  drama  entitled  The  Soul's  Fate — and 
he  will  speedily  utilise  it,  one  can  wager  safely,  he,  the 
great  ancient  eternal  dramatist  of  the  comedy  of  our 
existence. 


PREFACE  xi 

8. 

If  this  writing  be  obscure  to  any  individual,  and  jar 
on  his  ears,  I  do  not  think  that  it  is  necessarily  I  who 
am  to  blame.    It  is  clear  enough,  on  the  hypothesis  which 
I  presuppose,  namely,  that  the  reader  has  first  read  my 
previous  writings  and  has  not  grudged  them  a  certain 
amount  of  trouble:  it  is  not,  indeed,  a  simple  matter  to 
get  really  at  their  essence.    Take,  for  instance,  my  Zara- 
thustra;  I  allow  no  one  to  pass  muster  as  knowing  that 
book,  unless  every  single  word  therein  has  at  some  time 
wrought  in  him  a  profound  wound,  and  at  some  time 
exercised  on  him  a  profound  enchantment:  then  and  not 
till  then  can  he  enjoy  the  privilege  of  participating  rev- 
erently in  the  halcyon  element,  from  which  that  work  is 
born,  in  its  sunny  brilliance,  its  distance,  its  spaciousness, 
its  certainty    In  other  cases  the  aphoristic  form  produces 
difficulty,  but  this  is  only  because  this  form  is  treated  too 
casually.    An  aphorism  properly  coined  and  cast  into  its 
final  mould  is  far  from  being  "deciphered"  as  soon  as  it 
has  been  read;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  then  that  it  first 
requires  to  be  expounded — of  course  for  that  purpose  an 
art  of  exposition  is  necessary.     The  third  essay  in  this 
book  provides  an  example  of  what  is  offered,  of  what  in 
such  cases  I  call  exposition:  an  aphorism  is  prefixed  to 
that  essay,  the  essay  itself  is  its  commentary.     Certainly 
one  quality  which  nowadays  has  been  best  forgotten— 
and  that  is  why  it  will  take  some  time  yet  for  my  writings 
to  become  readable — is  essential  in  order  to  practise  read- 
ing as  an  art — a  quality  for  the  exercise  of  which  it  is 


xii  PREFACE 

necessary  to  be  a  cow,  and  under  no  circumstances  a 
modern  man! — rumination. 
Sils-Maria,  Upper  Engadine, 
July,  1887. 


FIRST  ESSAY 
"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD" 


i. 


Those  English  psychologists,  who  up  to  the  present  are 
the  only  philosophers  who  are  to  be  thanked  for  any 
endeavour  to  get  as  far  as  a  history  of  the  origin  of 
morality — these  men,  I  say,  offer  us  in  their  own  person- 
alities no  paltry  problem; — they  even  have,  if  I  am  to 
be  quite  frank  about  it,  in  their  capacity  of  living  riddles, 
an  advantage  over  their  books — they  themselves  are 
interesting!  These  English  psychologists — what  do  they 
really  mean?  We  always  find  them  voluntarily  or  in- 
voluntarily at  the  same  task  of  pushing  to  the  front  the 
partie  honteuse  of  our  inner  world,  and  looking  for  the 
efficient,  governing,  and  decisive  principle  in  that  precise 
quarter  where  the  intellectual  self-respect  of  the  race 
would  be  the  most  reluctant  to  find  it  (for  example,  in 
the  vis  inertice  of  habit,  or  in  forgetfulness,  or  in  a  blind 
and  fortuitous  mechanism  and  association  of  ideas,  or  in 
some  factor  that  is  purely  passive,  reflex,  molecular,  or 
fundamentally  stupid) — what  is  the  real  motive  power 
which  always  impels  these  psychologists  in  precisely  this 
direction?  Is  it  an  instinct  for  human  disparagement 
somewhat  sinister,  vulgar,  and  malignant,  or  perhaps  in- 

i 


THE  GEXEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

comprehensible  even  to  itself?  or  perhaps  a  touch  of 
pessimistic  jealousy,  the  mistrust  of  disillusioned  idealists 

3  have  become  gloomy,  poisoned,  and  bitter?  or  a  petty 

subconscious   enmity    and   rancour   against    Christianity 

(and    Plato),    that   has   conceivably   never   crossed    the 

vshold  of  consciousness?   or  just  a  vicious  taste  for 

se  elements  of  life  which  are  bizarre,  painfully  para- 
doxical, mystical,  and  illogical?  or,  as  a  final  alternative. 
a  dash  of  each  of  these  motives; — a  little  vulgarity,  a  little 
gloominess,  a  little  anti-Christianity,  a  little  craving  for 
the  necessary  piquancy? 

But  I  am  told  that  it  is  simply  a  case  of  old  frigid  and 
tedious  frogs  crawling  and  hopping  around  men  and  inside 
men,  as  if  they  were  as  thoroughly  at  home  there,  as  they 
would  be  in  a  swamp. 

I  am  opposed  to  this  statement,  nay,  I  do  not  believe 
it:  and  if,  in  the  impossibility  of  knowledge,  one  is  per- 
mitted to  wish,  so  do  I  wish  from  my  heart  that  just  the 
converse  metaphor  should  apply,  and  that  these  analysts 
with  their  psychological  microscopes  should  be,  at  bottom, 
brave,  proud,  and  magnanimous  animals  who  know  how 
to  bridle  both  their  hearts  and  their  smarts,  and  have 
rally  trained  themselves  to  sacrifice  what  is  desirable 

what  is  true,  any  truth  in  fact,  even  the  simple,  bitter, 

v,  repulsive,  unchristian,  and  immoral  truths — for 
there  are  truths  of  that  description. 

2. 

All  honour,  then,  to  the  noble  spirits  who  would  fain 
dominate  these  historians  of  morality.     But  it  is  certainly 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL/-  -GOOD  AXD  BAD"   3 

a  pity  that  they  lack  the  historical  sense  itself,  that  they 
themselves  are  quite  deserted  by  all  the  beneficent  spirits 
of  history.  The  whole  train  of  their  thought  runs,  as  was 
always  the  way  of  old-fashioned  philosophers,  on  thor- 
oughly unhistorical  lines:  there  is  no  doubt  on  this  point. 
The  crass  ineptitude  of  their  genealogy  of  morals  is 
immediately  apparent  when  the  question  arises  of  ascer- 
taining the  origin  of  the  idea  and  judgment  of  "good.*' 
'•'Man  had  originally,''  so  speaks  their  decree,  "praised 
and  called  'good'  altruistic  acts  from  the  standpoint  of 
those  on  whom  they  were  conferred,  that  is.  those  to 
whom  they  were  useful;  subsequently  the  origin  of  this 
praise  was  forgotten,  and  altruistic  acts,  simply  because, 
as  a  sheer  matter  of  habit,  they  were  praised  as  good, 
came  also  to  be  felt  as  good — as  though  they  contained  in 
themselves  some  intrinsic  goodness."  The  thing  is  obvi- 
ous:— this  initial  derivation  contains  already  all  the 
typical  and  idiosyncratic  traits  of  the  English  psycholo- 
gists— we  have  "utility,"  "forgetting."  "habit."  and  finally 
"error,"  the  whole  assemblage  forming  the  basis  of  a  sys- 
tem of  values,  on  which  the  higher  man  has  up  to  the 
present  prided  himself  as  though  it  were  a  kind  of  privi- 
lege of  man  in  general.  This  pride  must  be  brought  low. 
this  system  of  values  must  lose  its  values:  is  that  attained? 
Xow  the  first  argument  that  comes  read}-  to  my  hand 
is  that  the  real  homestead  of  the  concept  "good"  is 
sought  and  located  in  the  wrong  place:  the  judgment 
"good"  did  riot  originate  among  those  to  whom  goodness 
was  shown.  Much  rather  has  it  been  the  good  them- 
selves, that  is,  the  aristocratic,  the  powerful,  the  high- 
lioned,  the  high-minded,  who  have  felt  that  they  them- 


4  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

selves  were  good,  and  that  their  actions  were  good,  that* 
to  say  of  the  first  order,  in  contradistinction  to  all  the 
low,  the  low-minded,  the  vulgar,  and  the  plebeian.  It 
was  out  of  this  pathos  of  distance  that  they  first  arrogated 
the  right  to  create  values  for  their  own  profit,  and  to 
coin  the  names  of  such  values:  what  had  they  to  do  with 
utility?  The  standpoint  of  utility  is  as  alien  and  as 
inapplicable  as  it  could  possibly  be,  when  we  have  to  deal 
with  so  volcanic  an  effervescence  of  supreme  values,  creat- 
ing and  demarcating  as  they  do  a  hierarchy  within  them- 
selves: it  is  at  this  juncture  that  one  arrives  at  an  appre- 
ciation of  the  contrast  to  that  tepid  temperature,  which 
is  the  presupposition  on  which  every  combination  of 
worldly  wisdom  and  every  calculation  of  practical  ex- 
pediency is  always  based — an  1  not  for  one  occasional, 
not  for  one  exceptional  instance,  but  chronically.  The 
pathos  of  nobility  and  distance,  as  I  have  said,  the  chronic 
and  despotic  esprit  dc  corps  and  fundamental  instinct  of  a 
higher  dominant  race  coming  into  association  with  a 
meaner  race,  an  "under  race,"  this  is  the  origin  of  the 
antithesis  of  good  and  bad. 

(The  masters'  right  of  giving  names  goes  so  far  that 
it  is  permissible  to  look  upon  language  itself  as  the  ex- 
pression of  the  power  of  the  masters:  they  say  "this  is 
that,  and  that,"  they  seal  finally  every  object  and  every 
event  with  a  sound,  and  thereby  at  the  same  time  take 
possession  of  it.)  It  is  because  of  this  origin  that  the 
word  "good"  is  far  from  having  any  necessary  connection 
with  altruistic  acts,  in  accordance  with  the  superstitious 
belief  of  these  moral  philosophers.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
on  the  occasion  of  the  decay  of  aristocratic  values,  that 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"        5 

the  antitheses  between  "egoistic"  and  "altruistic"  presses 
more  and  more  heavily  on  the  human  conscience— it  is,  to 
use  my  own  language,  the  herd  instinct  which  finds  in 
this  antithesis  an  expression  in  many  ways.  And  even 
then  it  takes  a  considerable  time  for  this  instinct  to  be- 
come sufficiently  dominant,  for  the  valuation  to  be  inex- 
tricably dependent  on  this  antithesis  (as  is  the  case  in 
contemporary  Europe);  for  to-day  the  prejudice  is  pre- 
dominant, which,  acting  even  now  with  all  the  intensity  of 
an  obsession  and  brain  disease,  holds  that  "moral," 
"altruistic,"  and  "desinteresse"  are  concepts  of  equal 
value. 


In  the  second  place,  quite  apart  from  the  fact  that  this 
hypothesis  as  to  the  genesis  of  the  value  "good"  cannot 
be  historically  upheld,  it  suffers  from  an  inherent  psycho- 
logical contradiction.  The  utility  of  altruistic  conduct  has 
presumably  been  the  origin  of  its  being  praised,  and  this 
origin  has  become  forgotten: — But  in  what  conceivable 
way  is  this  forgetting  possible?  Has  perchance  the  utility 
of  such  conduct  ceased  at  some  given  moment?  The 
contrary  is  the  case.  This  utility  has  rather  been  experi- 
enced every  day  at  all  times,  and  is  consequently  a  feature 
that  obtains  a  new  and  regular  emphasis  with  every  fresh 
day;  it  follows  that,  so  far  from  vanishing  from  the 
consciousness,  so  far  indeed  from  being  forgotten,  it  must 
necessarily  become  impressed  on  the  consciousness  with 
ever-increasing  distinctness.  How  much  more  logical  is 
that  contrary  theory  (it  is  not  the  truer  for  that)  which 


6  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

is  represented,  for  instance,  by  Herbert  Spencer,  who 
places  the  concept  "good"  as  essentially  similar  to  the 
concept  "useful,"  "purposive,"  so  that  in  the  judgments 
"good"  and  "bad"  mankind  is  simply  summarising  and 
investing  with  a  sanction  its  unforgotten  and  unforget- 
table experiences  concerning  the  "useful-purposive"  and 
the  "mischievous-non-purposive."  According  to  this 
theory,  "good"  is  the  attribute  of  that  which  has  previ- 
ously shown  itself  useful;  and  so  is  able  to  claim  to  be 
considered  "valuable  in  the  highest  degree,"  "valuable 
in  itself."  This  method  of  explanation  is  also,  as  I  have 
said,  wrong,  but  at  any  rate  the  explanation  itself  is  co- 
herent, and  psychologically  tenable. 


4- 


The  guide-post  which  first  put  me  on  the  right  track 
was  this  question — what  is  the  true  etymological  signifi- 
cance of  the  various  symbols  for  the  idea  "good"  which 
have  been  coined  in  the  various  languages?  I  then  found 
that  they  all  led  back  to  the  same  evolution  of  the  same 
idea — that  everywhere  "aristocrat,"  "noble"  (in  the  social 
sense),  is  the  root  idea,  out  of  which  have  necessarily 
developed  "good"  in  the  sense  of  "with  aristocratic  soul." 
"noble,"  in  the  sense  of  "with  a  soul  of  high  calibre." 
"with  a  privileged  soul" — a  development  which  invariably 
runs  parallel  with  that  other  evolution  by  which  "vulvar." 
"plebeian,"  "low,"  are  made  to  change  finally  into  "bad." 
The  most  eloquent  proof  of  this  last  contention  is  the 
German  word  "schlccht"  itself:  this  word  is  identical  with 
"schlicht" — (compare     "schlcchtivcg"     and     "schlcchtcr- 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"        7 

dings")—  which,  originally  and  as  yet  without  any  sinister 
innuendo,  simply  denoted  the  plebeian  man  in  contrast  to 
the  aristocratic  man.  It  is  at  the  sufficiently  late  period 
of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  that  this  sense  becomes  changed 
to  the  sense  now  current.  From  the  standpoint  of  the 
Genealogy  of  Morals  this  discovery  seems  to  be  substan- 
tial: the  lateness  of  it  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  retarding 
influence  exercised  in  the  modern  world  by  democratic 
prejudice  in  the  sphere  of  all  questions  of  origin.  This 
extends,  as  will  shortly  be  shown,  even  to  the  province  of 
natural  science  and  physiology,  which  prima  jacie  is  the 
most  objective.  The  extent  of  the  mischief  which  is 
caused  by  this  prejudice  (once  it  is  free  of  all  trammels 
except  those  of  its  own  malice),  particularly  to  Ethics 
and  History,  is  shown  by  the  notorious  case  of  Buckle: 
it  was  in  Buckle  that  that  plebeianism  of  the  modern 
spirit,  which  is  of  English  origin,  broke  out  once  again 
from  its  malignant  soil  with  all  the  violence  of  a  slimy 
volcano,  and  with  that  salted,  rampant,  and  vulgar  elo- 
quence with  which  up  to  the  present  time  all  volcanoes 
have  spoken. 


With  regard  to  our  problem,  which  can  justly  be  called 
an  intimate  problem,  and  which  elects  to  appeal  to  only 
a  limited  number  of  ears:  it  is  of  no  small  interest  to 
ascertain  that  in  those  words  and  roots  which  denote 
"good"  we  catch  glimpses  of  that  arch-trait,  on  the 
strength  of  which  the  aristocrats  feel  themselves  to  be 
beings  of  a  higher  order  than  their  fellows.    Indeed,  they 


8  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

call  themselves  in  perhaps  the  most  frequent  instances 
simply  after  their  superiority  in  power  (e.g.  "the  power- 
ful," "the  lords,"  "the  commanders"),  or  after  the  most 
obvious  sign  of  their  superiority,  as  for  example  "the 
rich,"  "the  possessors"  (that  is  the  meaning  of  arya;  and 
the  Iranian  and  Slav  languages  correspond).  But  they 
also  call  themselves  after  some  characteristic  idiosyncrasy ; 
and  this  is  the  case  which  now  concerns  us.  They  name 
themselves,  for  instance,  "the  truthful":  this  is  first  done 
by  the  Greek  nobility  whose  mouthpiece  is  found  in 
Theognis,  the  Megarian  poet.  The  word  ecrOXo;,  which 
is  coined  for  the  purpose,  signifies  etymologically  "one 
who  is"  who  has  reality,  who  is  real,  who  is  true;  and 
then  with  a  subjective  twist,  the  "true,"  as  the  "truthful": 
at  this  stage  in  the  evolution  of  the  idea,  it  becomes  the 
motto  and  party  cry  of  the  nobility,  and  quite  completes 
the  transition  to  the  meaning  "noble,"  so  as  to  place  out- 
side the  pale  the  lying,  vulgar  man,  as  Theognis  conceives 
and  portrays  him — till  finally  the  word  after  the  decay  of 
the  nobility  is  left  to  delineate  psychological  noblesse, 
and  becomes  as  it  were  ripe  and  mellow.  In  the  word 
y.axcx;  as  in  Sei16<;  (the  plebeian  in  contrast  to  the 
dyuOog)  the  cowardice  is  emphasised.  This  affords  per- 
haps an  inkling  on  what  lines  the  etymological  origin  of 
the  very  ambiguous  dyaddg  is  to  be  investigated.  In 
the  Latin  mains  (which  I  place  side  by  side  with  \vih 
the  vulgar  man  can  be  distinguished  as  the  dark-coloured, 
and  above  all  as  the  black-haired  ("Iiic  niger  est"),  as 
the  pre-Aryan  inhabitants  of  the  Italian  soil,  whose  com- 
plexion formed  the  clearest  feature  of  distinction  from 
the   dominant   blondes,   namely,    the   Aryan   conquering 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"        9 

race: — at  any  rate  Gaelic  has  afforded  me  the  exact  ana- 
logue— Fin  (for  instance,  in  the  name  Fin-Gal),  the  dis- 
tinctive word  of  the  nobility,  finally — good,  noble,  clean, 
but  originally  the  blonde-haired  man  in  contrast  to  the 
dark  black-haired  aboriginals.  The  Celts,  if  I  may  make 
a  parenthetic  statement,  were  throughout  a  blonde  race; 
and  it  is  wrong  to  connect,  as  Virchow  still  connects, 
those  traces  of  an  essentially  dark-haired  population  which 
are  to  be  seen  on  the  more  elaborate  ethnographical  maps 
of  Germany  with  any  Celtic  ancestry  or  with  any  ad- 
mixture of  Celtic  blood:  in  this  context  it  is  rather  the 
pre- Aryan  population  of  Germany  which  surges  up  to 
these  districts.  (The  same  is  true  substantially  of  the 
whole  of  Europe:  in  point  of  fact,  the  subject  race  has 
finally  again  obtained  the  upper  hand,  in  complexion  and 
the  shortness  of  the  skull,  and  perhaps  in  the  intellectual 
and  social  qualities.  Who  can  guarantee  that  modern 
democracy,  still  more  modern  anarchy,  and  indeed  that 
tendency  to  the  "Commune,"  the  most  primitive  form  of 
society,  which  is  now  common  to  all  the  Socialists  in 
Europe,  does  not  in  its  real  essence  signify  a  monstrous 
reversion — and  that  the  conquering  and  master  race — the 
Aryan  race,  is  not  also  becoming  inferior  physiologically?) 
I  believe  that  I  can  explain  the  Latin  bonus  as  the  "war- 
rior": my  hypothesis  is  that  I  am  right  in  deriving  bonus 
from  an  older  duonus  (compare  beUum-duellum 
=  duen-lum,  in  which  the  word  duonus  appears  to  me  to 
be  contained).  Bonus  accordingly  as  the  man  of  discord, 
of  variance,  "entzweiung"  (duo),  as  the  warrior:  one  sees 
what  in  ancient  Rome  "the  good"  meant  for  a  man.  Must 
not  our  actual  German  word  gut  mean  "the  godlike,  the 


io  THE  GEXEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

man  of  godlike  race"?  and  be  identical  with  the  national 
name  (originally  the  nobles'  name)  of  the  Goths? 

The  grounds  for  this  supposition  do  not  appertain  to 
this  work. 


6. 


Above  all,  there  is  no  exception  (though  there  are  op- 
portunities for  exceptions)  to  this  rule,  that  the  idea  of 
political  superiority  always  resolves  itself  into  the  idea  of 
psychological  superiority,  in  those  cases  where  the  highest 
caste  is  at  the  same  time  the  priestly  caste,  and  in  accord- 
ance with  its  general  characteristics  confers  on  itself  the 
privilege  of  a  title  which  alludes  specifically  to  its  priestly 
function.  It  is  in  these  cases,  for  instances,  that  "dean" 
and  "unclean"  confront  each  other  for  the  first  time  as 
badges  of  class  distinction;  here  again  there  develops  a 
"good"  and  a  "bad,"  in  a  sense  which  has  ceased  to  be 
merely  social.  Moreover,  care  should  be  taken  not  to 
take  these  ideas  of  "clean"  and  "unclean"  too  seriously, 
too  broadly,  or  too  symbolically:  all  the  ideas  of  ancient 
man  have,  on  the  contrary,  got  to  be  understood  in  their 
initial  stages,  in  a  sense  which  is,  to  an  almost  incon- 
ceivable extent,  crude,  coarse,  physical,  and  narrow,  and 
above  all  essentially  unsymbolical.  The  "clean  man"  is 
originally  only  a  man  who  washes  himself,  who  abstains 
from  certain  foods  which  are  conducive  to  skin  diseases, 
who  does  not  sleep  with  the  unclean  women  of  the  lower 
classes,  who  has  a  horror  of  blood — not  more,  not  much 
more!  On  the  other  hand,  the  very  nature  of  a  priestly 
aristocracy  shows  the  reasons  why  just  at  such  an  early 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"       n 

juncture  there  should  ensue  a  really  dangerous  sharpen- 
ing and  intensification  of  opposed  values:  it  is,  in  fact, 
through  these  opposed  values  that  gulfs  are  cleft  in  the 
social  plane,  which  a  veritable  Achilles  of  free  thought 
would  shudder  to  cross.  There  is  from  the  outset  a  cer- 
tain diseased  taint  in  such  sacerdotal  aristocracies,  and 
in  the  habits  which  prevail  in  such  societies — habits  which, 
averse  as  they  are  to  action,  constitute  a  compound  of 
introspection  and  explosive  emotionalism,  as  a  result  of 
which  there  appears  that  introspective  morbidity  and* 
neurasthenia,  which  adheres  almost  inevitably  to  all  priests 
at  all  times:  with  regard,  however,  to  the  remedy  which 
they  themselves  have  invented  for  this  disease — the  phil- 
osopher has  no  option  but  to  state,  that  it  has  proved 
itself  in  its  effects  a  hundred  times  more  dangerous  than 
the  disease,  from  which  it  should  have  been  the  deliverer. 
iHumanity  itself  is  still  diseased  from  the  effects  of  the 
naivetes  of  this  priestly  cure.  Take,  for  instance,  certain 
kinds  of  diet  (abstention  from  flesh),  fasts,  sexual  con- 
tinence, flight  into  the  wilderness  (a  kind  of  Weir-Mitchell 
isolation,  though  of  course  without  that  system  of  ex- 
cessive feeding  and  fattening  which  is  the  most  efficient 
antidote  to  all  the  hysteria  of  the  ascetic  ideal) ;  con- 
sider too  the  whole  metaphysic  of  the  priests,  with  its  war 
on  the  senses,  its  enervation,  its  hair-splitting;  consider  its 
self-hypnotism  on  the  fakir  and  Brahman  principles  (it 
uses  Brahman  as  a  glass  disc  and  obsession),  and  that 
climax  which  we  can  understand  only  too  well  of  an 
unusual  satiety  with  its  panacea  of  nothingness  (or  God: 
— the  demand  for  a  unio  mystica  with  God  is  the  demand 
of  the  Buddhist  for  nothingness.  Nirvana — and  nothing 


1 2  THE  GEXEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

else ! ) .  In  sacerdotal  societies  every  element  is  on  a  more 
dangerous  scale,  not  merely  cures  and  remedies,  but  also 
pride,  revenge,  cunning,  exaltation,  love,  ambition,  virtue, 
morbidity: — further,  it  can  fairly  be  stated  that  it  is  on 
the  soil  of  this  essentially  dangerous  form  of  human 
society,  the  sacerdotal  form,  that  man  really  becomes  for 
the  first  time  an  interesting  animal,  that  it  is  in  this  form 
that  the  soul  of  man  has  in  a  higher  sense  attained  depths 
and  become  evil — and  those  are  the  two  fundamental 
forms  of  the  superiority  which  up  to  the  present  maz  has 
exhibited  over  every  other  animal. 


The  reader  will  have  already  surmised  with  what  «iase 
the  priestly  mode  of  valuation  can  branch  off  from  the 
knightly  aristocratic  mode,  and  then  develop  into  the 
very  antithesis  of  the  latter:  special  impetus  is  given  to 
this  opposition,  by  every  occasion  when  the  castes  of  the 
priests  and  warriors  confront  each  other  with  mutual  jeal- 
ousy and  cannot  agree  over  the  prize.  The  knightly- 
aristocratic  "values"  are  based  on  a  careful  cult  of  the 
physical,  on  a  flowering,  rich,  and  even  effervescing 
healthiness,  that  goes  considerably  beyond  what  is  neces- 
sary for  maintaining  life,  on  war,  adventure,  the  chase, 
the  dance,  the  tourney — on  everything,  in  fact,  which  is 
contained  in  strong,  free,  and  joyous  action.  The  priestly- 
aristocratic  mode  of  valuation  is — we  have  seen — based 
on  other  hypotheses:  it  is  bad  enough  for  this  class  when 
it  is  a  question  of  war!  Yet  the  priests  are,  as  is  notori- 
ous,  the  worst  enemies — why?     Because  they  are  the 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      13 

weakest.  Their  weakness  causes  their  hate  to  expand  into 
a  monstrous  and  sinister  shape,  a  shape  which  is  most 
crafty  and  most  poisonous.  The  really  great  haters  in  the 
history  of  the  world  have  always  been  priests,  who  are 
also  the  cleverest  haters — in  comparison  with  the  clever- 
ness of  priestly  revenge,  every  other  piece  of  cleverness 
is  practically  negligible.  Human  history  would  be  too 
fatuous  for  anything  were  it  not  for  the  cleverness  im- 
ported into  it  by  the  weak — take  at  once  the  most  impor- 
tant instance.  All  the  world's  efforts  against  the  "aristo- 
crats," the  "mighty,"  the  "masters,"  the  "holders  of 
power,"  are  negligible  by  comparison  with  what  has  been 
accomplished  against  those  classes  by  the  Jews — the 
Jews,  that  priestly  nation  which  eventually  realised  that 
the  one  method  of  effecting  satisfaction  on  its  enemies  and 
tyrants  was  by  means  of  a  radical  transvaluation  of 
values,  which  was  at  the  same  time  an  act  of  the  cleverest 
revenge.  Yet  the  method  was  only  appropriate  to  a 
nation  of  priests,  to  a  nation  of  the  most  jealously  nursed 
priestly  revengefulness.  It  was  the  Jews  who,  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  aristocratic  equation  (good  =  aristocratic  = 
beautiful  =  happy  =  loved  by  the  gods),  dared  with  a 
terrifying  logic  to  suggest  the  contrary  equation,  and 
indeed  to  maintain  with  the  teeth  of  the  most  profound 
hatred  (the  hatred  of  weakness)  this  contrary  equation, 
namely,  "the  wretched  are  alone  the  good;  the  poor,  the 
weak,  the  lowly,  are  alone  the  good;  the  suffering,  the 
needy,  the  sick,  the  loathsome,  are  the  only  ones  who  are 
pious,  the  only  ones  who  are  blessed,  for  them  alone  is 
salvation — but  you,  on  the  other  hand,  you  aristocrats, 
you  men  of  power,  you  are  to  all  eternity  the  evil,  the 


14  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

horrible,  the  covetous,  the  insatiate,  the  godless;  eter- 
nally also  shall  you  be  the  unblessed,  the  cursed,  the 
damned!"  We  know  who  it  was  who  reaped  the  heritage 
of  this  Jewish  transvaluation.  In  the  context  of  the 
monstrous  and  inordinately  fateful  initiative  which  the 
Jews  have  exhibited  in  connection  with  this  most  funda- 
mental of  all  declarations  of  war,  I  remember  the  passage 
which  came  to  my  pen  on  another  occasion  (Beyond 
Good  and  Evil,  Aph.  195) — that  it  was,  in  fact,  with  the 
Jews  that  the  revolt  of  the  slaves  begins  in  the  sphere  oj 
morals;  that  revolt  which  has  behind  it  a  history  of  two 
millennia,  and  which  at  the  present  day  has  only  moved 
out  of  our  sight,  because  it — has  achieved  victory. 


8. 


But  you  understand  this  not?  You  have  no  eyes  for 
a  force  which  has  taken  two  thousand  years  to  achieve 
victory? — There  is  nothing  wonderful  in  this:  all  lengthy 
processes  are  hard  to  see  and  to  realise.  But  this  is  what 
took  place:  from  the  trunk  of  that  tree  of  revenge  and 
hate,  Jewish  hate, — that  most  profound  and  sublime  hate, 
which  creates  ideals  and  changes  old  values  to  new  crea- 
tions, the  like  of  which  has  never  been  on  earth, — there 
grew  a  phenomenon  which  was  equally  incomparable,  a 
new  love,  the  most  profound  and  sublime  of  all  kinds  of 
]ove; — and  from  what  other  trunk  could  it  have  grown? 
But  beware  of  supposing  that  this  love  has  soared  on  its 
upward  growth,  as  in  any  way  a  real  negation  of  that 
thirst  for  revenge,  as  an  antithesis  to  the  Jewish  hate! 
No,  the  contrary  is  the  truth!     This  love  grew  out  of 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"       15 

that  hate,  as  its  crown,  as  its  triumphant  crown,  circling 
wider  and  wider  amid  the  clarity  and  fulness  of  the  sun, 
and  pursuing  in  the  very  kingdom  of  light  and  height 
its  goal  of  hatred,  its  victory,  its  spoil,  its  strategy,  with 
the  same  intensity  with  which  the  roots  of  that  tree  of 
hate  sank  into  everything  which  was  deep  and  evil  with 
increasing  stability  and  increasing  desire.  This  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  the  incarnate  gospel  of  love,  this  "Redeemer" 
bringing  salvation  and  victory  to  the  poor,  the  sick,  the 
sinful— was  he  not  really  temptation  in  its  most  sinister 
and  irresistible  form,  temptation  to  take  the  tortuous 
path  to  those  very  Jewish  values  and  those  very  Jewish 
ideals?  Has  not  Israel  really  obtained  the  final  goal  of 
its  sublime  revenge,  by  the  tortuous  paths  of  this  "Re- 
deemer," for  all  that  he  might  pose  as  Israel's  adversary 
and  Israel's  destroyer?  Is  it  not  due  to  the  black  magic 
of  a  really  great  policy  of  revenge,  of  a  far-seeing,  bur- 
rowing revenge,  both  acting  and  calculating  with  slow- 
ness, that  Israel  himself  must  repudiate  before  all  the 
world  the  actual  instrument  of  his  own  revenge  and  nail 
it  to  the  cross,  so  that  all  the  world — that  is,  all  the  ene- 
mies of  Israel — could  nibble  without  suspicion  at  this 
very  bait?  Could,  moreover,  any  human  mind  with  all 
its  elaborate  ingenuity  invent  a  bait  that  was  more  truly 
dangerous?  Anything  that  was  even  equivalent  in  the 
power  of  its  seductive,  intoxicating,  defiling,  and  corrupt- 
ing influence  to  that  symbol  of  the  holy  cross,  to  that 
awful  paradox  of  a  "god  on  the  cross,"  to  that  mystery  of 
the  unthinkable,  supreme,  and  utter  horror  of  the  self- 
crucifixion  of  a  god  for  the  salvation  of  matt?  It  is  at 
least  certain  that  mb  hoc  signo  Israel,  with  its  revenge 


1 6  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

and  transvaluation  of  all  values,  has  up  to  the  present 
always  triumphed  again  over  all  other  ideals,  over  all 
more  aristocratic  ideals. 


"But  why  do  you  talk  of  nobler  ideals?  Let  us  submit 
to  the  facts;  that  the  people  have  triumphed — or  the 
slaves,  or  the  populace,  or  the  herd,  or  whatever  name 
you  care  to  give  them — if  this  has  happened  through 
the  Jews,  so  be  it!  In  that  case  no  nation  ever  had  a 
greater  mission  in  the  world's  history.  The  'masters' 
have  been  done  away  with;  the  morality  of  the  vulgar 
man  has  triumphed.  This  triumph  may  also  be  called  a 
blood-poisoning  (it  has  mutually  fused  the  races) — I  do 
not  dispute  it;  but  there  is  no  doubt  but  that  this 
intoxication  has  succeeded.  The  'redemption'  of  the 
human  race  (that  is,  from  the  masters)  is  progressing; 
swimmingly;  everything  is  obviously  becoming  Judaised, 
or  Christianised,  or  vulgarised  (what  is  there  in  the 
words?).  It  seems  impossible  to  stop  the  course  of  this 
poisoning  through  the  whole  body  politic  of  mankind — 
but  its  tempo  and  pace  may  from  the  present  time  be 
slower,  more  delicate,  quieter,  more  discreet — there  is 
time  enough.  In  view  of  this  context  has  the  Church 
nowadays  any  necessary  purpose?  Has  it,  in  fact,  a  right 
to  live?  Or  could  man  get  on  without  it?  Quocritur. 
It  seems  that  it  fetters  and  retards  this  tendency,  instead 
of  accelerating  it.  Well,  even  that  might  be  its  utility. 
The  Church  certainly  is  a  crude  and  boorish  institution, 
that  is  repugnant  to  an  intelligence  with  any  pretence  at 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"       17 

delicacy,  to  a  really  modern  taste.  Should  it  not  at  any 
rate  learn  to  be  somewhat  more  subtle?  It  alienates 
nowadays,  more  than  it  allures.  Which  of  us  would,  for- 
sooth, be  a  freethinker  if  there  were  no  Church?  It  is 
the  Church  which  repels  us,  not  its  poison — apart  from 
the  Church  we  like  the  poison."  This  is  the  epilogue 
of  a  freethinker  to  my  discourse,  of  an  honourable  animal 
(as  he  has  given  abundant  proof),  and  a  democrat  to 
boot;  he  had  up  to  that  time  listened  to  me,  and  could 
not  endure  my  silence,  but  for  me,  indeed,  with  regard 
to  this  topic  there  is  much  on  which  to  be  silent. 


10. 


The  revolt  of  the  slaves  in  morals  begins  in  the  very 
principle  of  resentment  becoming  creative  and  giving 
birth  to  values — a  resentment  experienced  by  creatures 
who,  deprived  as  they  are  of  the  proper  outlet  of  action, 
are  forced  to  find  their  compensation  in  an  imaginary 
revenge.  While  every  aristocratic  morality  springs  from 
a  triumphant  affirmation  of  its  own  demands,  the  slave 
morality  says  "no"  from  the  very  outset  to  what  is  "out- 
side itself,"  "different  from  itself,"  and  "not  itself:  and 
this  "no"  is  its  creative  deed.  This  volte-face  of  the 
valuing  standpoint — this  inevitable  gravitation  to  the  ob- 
jective instead  of  back  to  the  subjective — is  typical  of 
resentment":  the  slave-morality  requires  as  the  condi- 
tion of  its  existence  an  external  and  objective  world,  to 
employ  physiological  terminology,  it  requires  objective 
stimuli  to  be  capable  of  action  at  all — its  action  is  fun- 
damentally a  reaction.     The  contrary  is  the  case  when 


a 


1 8  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

we  come  to  the  aristocrat's  system  of  values:  it  acts  and 
grows  spontaneously,  it  merely  seeks  its  antithesis  in 
order  to  pronounce  a  more  grateful  and  exultant  "yes" 
to  its  own  self; — its  negative  conception,  "low,"  "vulgar." 
"bad,"  is  merely  a  pale  late-born  foil  in  comparison  with 
its  positive  and  fundamental  conception  (saturated  as  it  is 
with  life  and  passion),  of  "we  aristocrats,  we  good  ones, 
we  beautiful  ones,  we  happy  ones." 

When  the  aristocratic  morality  goes  astray  and  com- 
mits sacrilege  on  reality,  this  is  limited  to  that  particular1 
sphere  with  which  it  is  not  sufficiently  acquainted — a 
sphere,  in  fact,  from  the  real  knowledge  of  which  it 
disdainfully  defends  itself.  It  misjudges,  in  some  cases, 
the  sphere  which  it  despises,  the  sphere  of  the  common 
vulgar  man  and  the  low  people:  on  the  other  hand,  due 
weight  should  be  given  to  the  consideration  that  in  any 
case  the  mood  of  contempt,  of  disdain,  of  supercilious- 
ness, even  on  the  supposition  that  it  falsely  portrays  the 
object  of  its  contempt,  will  always  be  far  removed  from 
mat  degree  of  falsity  which  will  always  characterise  the 
attacks — in  effigy,  of  course — of  the  vindictive  hatred  and 
revengeful ness  of  the  weak  in  onslaughts  on  their  ene- 
mies. In  point  of  fact,  there  is  in  contempt  too  strong 
an  admixture  of  nonchalance,  of  casualness,  of  boredom, 
of  impatience,  even  of  personal  exultation,  for  it  to  be 
capable  of  distorting  its  victim  into  a  real  caricature  or 
a  real  monstrosity.  Attention  again  should  be  paid  to 
the  almost  benevolent  mtances  which,  for  instance,  the 
Greek  nobility  imports  into  all  the  words  by  which  it 
distinguishes  the  common  people  from  itself;  note  how 
continuously  a  kind  of  pity,  care,  and  consideration  im- 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      19 

parts  its  honeyed  flavour,  until  at  last  almost  all  the 
words  which  are  applied  to  the  vulgar  man  survive  finally 
as  expressions  for  "unhappy,"  "worthy  of  pity"  (corn- 
Dare  8£iA6g,  ositaxiog,  jrovriQog,  uoxfrr]Q°S '»  the  latter  two 
names  really  denoting  the  vulgar  man  as  labour-slave  and 
beast  of  burden) — and  how,  conversely,  "bad,"  "low," 
"unhappy"  have  never  ceased  to  ring  in  the  Greek  ear 
with  a  tone  in  which  "unhappy"  is  the  predominant  note: 
this  is  a  heritage  of  the  old  noble  aristocratic  morality, 
which  remains  true  to  itself  even  in  contempt  (let  philolo- 
gists remember  the  sense  in  which  oTguooc;,  <xvo?.6o;, 
tWjuiov,  bvoxv%£iv,  ^vucpoQa  used  to  be  employed.  The 
"well-born"  simply  felt  themselves  the  "happy";  they 
did  not  have  to  manufacture  their  happiness  artificially 
through  looking  at  their  enemies,  or  in  cases  to  talk  and 
lie  themselves  into  happiness  (as  is  the  custom  with  all 
resentful  men) ;  and  similarly,  complete  men  as  they  were, 
exuberant  with  strength,  and  consequently  necessarily 
energetic,  they  were  too  wise  to  dissociate  happiness 
from  action — activity  becomes  in  their  minds  necessarily 
counted  as  happiness  (that  is  the  etymology  of  sv 
jiodrretv)— all  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  "happiness"  of 
the  weak  and  the  oppressed,  with  their  festering  venom 
and  malignity,  among  whom  happiness  appears  essen- 
tially as  a  narcotic,  a  deadening,  a  quietude,  a  peace,  a 
"Sabbath,"  an  enervation  of  the  mind  and  relaxation  of 
the  limbs, — in  short,  a  purely  passive  phenomenon.  While 
the  aristocratic  man  lived  in  confidence  and  openness 
with  himself  (yewaio?,  "noble-born,"  emphasises  the 
nuance  "sincere,"  and  perhaps  also  "naif"),  the  resentful 
man,  on  the  other  hand,  is  neither  sincere  nor  naif,  nor 


20  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

honest  and  candid  with  himself.  His  soul  squints;  his 
mind  loves  hidden  crannies,  tortuous  paths  and  back- 
doors, everything  secret  appeals  to  him  as  his  world,  his 
safety,  his  balm;  he  is  past  master  in  silence,  in  not  for- 
getting, in  waiting,  in  provisional  self-depreciation  and 
self-abasement.  A  race  of  such  resentful  men  will  of 
necessity  eventually  prove  more  prudent  than  any  aris- 
tocratic race,  it  will  honour  prudence  on  quite  a  distinct 
scale,  as,  in  fact,  a  paramount  condition  of  existence, 
while  prudence  among  aristocratic  men  is  apt  to  be  tinged 
with  a  delicate  flavour  of  luxury  and  refinement;  so 
among  them  it  plays  nothing  like  so  integral  a  part  as 
that  complete  certainty  of  function  of  the  governing  un- 
conscious instincts,  or  as  indeed  a  certain  lack  of  pru- 
dence, such  as  a  vehement  and  valiant  charge,  whether 
against  danger  or  the  enemy,  or  as  those  ecstatic  bursts 
of  rage,  love,  reverence,  gratitude,  by  which  at  all  times 
noble  souls  have  recognised  each  other.  When  the  re- 
sentment of  the  aristocratic  man  manifests  itself,  it  fulfils 
and  exhausts  itself  in  an  immediate  reaction,  and  conse- 
quently instills  no  venom:  on  the  other  hand,  it  never 
manifests  itself  at  all  in  countless  instances,  when  in  the 
case  of  the  feeble  and  weak  it  would  be  inevitable.  An 
inability  to  take  seriously  for  any  length  of  time  their 
enemies,  their  disasters,  their  misdeeds— that  is  the  sign 
of  the  full  strong  natures  who  possess  a  superfluity  of 
moulding  plastic  force,  that  heals  completely  and  pro- 
duces forgetfulness:  a  good  example  of  this  in  the  modern 
world  is  Mirabeau,  who  had  no  memory  for  any  insults 
and  meannesses  which  were  practised  on  him,  and  who 
was  only  incapable  of  forgiving  because  he  forgot.    Such 


"GOOD  AND  EViiv   "GOOD  AND  BAD"      21 

a  man  indeed  shakes  off  with  a  shrug  many  a  worm 
which  would  have  buried  itself  in  another;  it  is  only  in 
characters  like  these  that  we  see  the  possibility  (suppos- 
ing, of  course,  that  there  is  such  a  possibility  in  the 
world)  of  the  real  "love  of  one's  enemies."  What  re- 
spect for  his  enemies  is  found,  forsooth,  in  an  aristocratic 
man- — and  such  a  reverence  is  already  a  bridge  to  love! 
He  insists  on  having  his  enemy  to  himself  as  his  distinc- 
tion. He  tolerates  no  other  enemy  but  a  man  in  whose 
character  there  is  nothing  to  despise  and  much  to  honour! 
On  the  other  hand,  imagine  the  "enemy"  as  the  resentful 
man  conceives  him — and  it  is  here  exactly  that  we  see 
his  work,  his  creativeness;  he  has  conceived  "the  evil 
enemy,"  the  "evil  one,"  and  indeed  that  is  the  root  idea 
from  which  he  now  evolves  as  a  contrasting  and  cor- 
responding figure  a  "good  one,"  himself — his  very  self! 


11. 


The  method  of  this  man  is  quite  contrary  to  that  of  the 
aristocratic  man,  who  conceives  the  root  idea  "good" 
spontaneously  and  straight  away,  that  is  to  say,  out  of  ' 
himself,  and  from  that  material  then  creates  for  himself 
a  concept  of  "bad"!  This  "bad"  of  aristocratic  origin 
and  that  "evil"  out  of  the  cauldron  of  unsatisfied  hatred 
— the  former  an  imitation,  an  "extra,"  an  additional 
nuance;  the  latter,  on  the  other  hand,  the  original,  the 
beginning,  the  essential  act  in  the  conception  of  a  slave- 
morality — these  two  words  "bad"  and  "evil,"  how  great 
a  difference-  do  they  mark,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they 
have  an  identical  contrary  in  the  idea  "good."    But  the 


22  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

idea  "good"  is  not  the  same:  much  rather  let  the  question 
be  asked,  "Who  is  really  evil  according  to  the  meaning 
of  the  morality  of  resentment?"  In  all  sternness  let  it 
be  answered  thus: — just  the  good  man  of  the  other 
morality,  just  the  aristocrat,  the  powerful  one,  the  one 
who  rules,  but  who  is  distorted  by  the  venomous  eye  of 
resentfulnese,  into  a  new  colour,  a  new  signification,  a 
new  appearance.  This  particular  point  we  would  be  the 
last  to  deny:  the  man  who  learnt  to  know  those  "good" 
ones  only  as  enemies,  learnt  at  the  same  time  not  to 
know  them  only  as  "evil  enemies,"  and  the  same  men 
who  inter  pares  were  kept  so  rigorously  in  bounds  through 
convention,  respect,  custom,  and  gratitude,  though  much 
more  through  mutual  vigilance  and  jealousy  inter  pares, 
these  men  who  in  their  relations  with  each  other  find  so 
many  new  ways  of  manifesting  consideration,  self-control, 
delicacy,  loyalty,  pride,  and  friendship,  these  men  are  in 
reference  to  what  is  outside  their  circle  (where  the  foreign 
element,  a  foreign  country,  begins) ,  not  much  better  than 
beasts  of  prey,  which  have  been  let  loose.  They  enjoy 
there  freedom  from  all  social  control,  they  feel  that  in 
the  wilderness  they  can  give  vent  with  impunity  to  that 
tension  which  is  produced  by  enclosure  and  imprison- 
ment in  the  peace  of  society,  they  revert  to  the  innocence 
of  the  beast-of-prey  conscience,  like  jubilant  monsters, 
who  perhaps  come  from  a  ghostly  bout  of  murder,  arson, 
rape,  and  torture,  with  bravado  and  a  moral  equanimity, 
as  though  merely  some  wild  student's  prank  had  been 
played,  perfectly  convinced  that  the  poets  have  now  an 
ample  theme  to  sing  and  celebrate.  It  is  impossible  not 
to  recognise  at  the  core  of  all  these  aristocratic  races  the 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      23 

beast  of  prey;  the  magnificent  blonde  bride,  avidly  ram- 
pant for  spoil  and  victory;  this  hidden  core  needed  an 
outlet  from  time  to  time,  the  beast  must  get  loose  again, 
must  return  into  the  wilderness — the  Roman,  Arabic, 
German,  and  Japanese  nobility,  the  Homeric  heroes,  the 
Scandinavian  Vikings,  are  all  alike  in  this  need.  It  is  the 
aristocratic  races  who  have  left  the  idea  "Barbarian"  on 
all  the  tracks  in  which  they  have  marched;  nay,  a  con- 
sciousness of  this  very  barbarianism,  and  even  a  pride  in 
it,  manifests  itself  even  in  their  highest  civilisation  (for 
example,  when  Pericles  says  to  his  Athenians  in  that  cele- 
brated funeral  oration,  "Our  audacity  has  forced  a  way 
over  every  land  and  sea,  rearing  everywhere  imperishable 
memorials  of  itself  for  good  and  for  evil").  This  audac- 
ity of  aristocratic  races,  mad,  absurd,  and  spasmodic  as 
may  be  its  expression;  the  incalculable  and  fantastic 
nature  of  their  enterprises, — Pericles  sets  in  special  relief 
and  glory  the  Qcrfruuia  of  the  Athenians,  their  non- 
chalance and  contempt  for  safety,  body,  life,  and  com- 
fort, their  awful  joy  and  intense  delight  in  all  destruction, 
in  all  the  ecstasies  of  victory  and  cruelty, — all  these  fea- 
tures become  crystallised,  for  those  who  suffered  thereby 
in  the  picture  of  the  "barbarian,"  of  the  "evil  enemy," 
perhaps  of  the  "Goth"  and  of  the  "Vandal."  The  pro- 
found, icy  mistrust  which  the  German  provokes,  as  soon 
as  he  arrives  at  power, — even  at  the  present  time, — is 
always  still  an  aftermath  of  that  inextinguishable  horror 
with  which  for  whole  centuries  Europe  has  regarded  the 
wrath  of  the  blonde  Teuton  beast  (although  between  the 
old  Germans  and  ourselves  there  exists  scarcely  a  psycho- 
logical, let  alone  a  physical,  relationship).     I  have  once 


24  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

called  attention  to  the  embarrassment  of  Hesiod,  when 
he  conceived  the  series  of  social  ages,  and  endeavoured 
to  express  them  in  gold,  silver,  and  bronze.  He  could 
only  dispose  of  the  contradiction,  with  which  he  was 
confronted,  by  the  Homeric  world,  an  age  magnificent  in- 
deed, but  at  the  same  time  so  awful  and  so  violent,  by 
making  two  ages  out  of  one,  which  he  henceforth  placed 
one  behind  the  other — first,  the  age  of  the  heroes  and 
demigods,  as  that  world  had  remained  in  the  memories 
of  the  aristocratic  families,  who  found  therein  their  own 
ancestors;  secondly,  the  bronze  age,  as  that  correspond- 
ing age  appeared  to  the  descendants  of  the  oppressed, 
spoiled,  ill-treated,  exiled,  enslaved;  namely,  as  an  age 
of  bronze,  as  I  have  said,  hard,  cold,  terrible,  without 
feelings  and  without  conscience,  crushing  everything,  and 
bespattering  everything  with  blood.  Granted  the  truth 
of  the  theory  now  believed  to  be  true,  that  the  very 
essence  of  all  civilisation  is  to  train  out  of  man,  the  beast 
of  prey,  a  tame  and  civilised  animal,  a  domesticated 
animal,  it  follows  indubitably  that  we  must  regard  as  the 
real  tools  of  civilisation  all  those  instincts  of  reaction  and 
resentment,  by  the  help  of  which  the  aristocratic  races, 
together  with  their  ideals,  were  finally  degraded  and 
overpowered;  though  that  has  not  yet  come  to  be  syn- 
onymous with  saying  that  the  bearers  of  those  tools  also 
represented  the  civilisation.  It  is  rather  the  contrary  that 
is  not  only  probable— nay,  it  is  palpable  to-day:  these 
bearers  of  vindictive  instincts  that  have  to  be  bottled  up, 
these  descendants  of  all  European  and  non-European 
slavery,  especially  of  the  pre- Aryan  population— the 
people,  I  say,  represent  the  decline  of  humanity!     These 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"       25 

"tools  of  civilisation"  are  a  disgrace  to  humanity,  and 
constitute  in  reality  more  of  an  argument  against  civili- 
sation, more  of  a  reason  why  civilisation  should  be  sus- 
pected. One  may  be  perfectly  justified  in  being  always 
afraid  of  the  blonde  beast  that  lies  at  the  core  of  all 
aristocratic  races,  and  in  being  on  one's  guard:  but  who 
would  not  a  hundred  times  prefer  to  be  afraid,  when  one 
at  the  same  time  admires,  than  to  be  immune  from  fear, 
at  the  cost  of  being  perpetually  obsessed  with  the  loath- 
some spectacle  of  the  distorted,  the  dwarfed,  the  stunted, 
the  envenomed?  And  is  that  not  our  fate?  What  pro- 
duces to-day  our  repulsion  towards  "man"? — for  we  suffer 
from  "man,"  there  is  no  doubt  about  it.  It  is  not  fear; 
it  is  rather  that  we  have  nothing  more  to  fear  from  men ; 
it  is  that  the  worm  "man"  is  in  the  foreground  and 
pullulates;  it  is  that  the  "tame  man,"  the  wretched 
mediocre  and  unedifying  creature,  has  learnt  to  consider 
himself  a  goal  and  a  pinnacle,  an  inner  meaning,  an  his- 
toric principle,  a  "higher  man";  yes,  it  is  that  he  has  a 
certain  right  so  to  consider  himself,  in  so  far  as  he  feels 
that  in  contrast  to  that  excess  of  deformity,  disease,  ex- 
haustion, and  effeteness  whose  odour  is  beginning  to  pol- 
lute present-day  Europe,  he  at  any  rate  has  achieved  a 
relative  success,  he  at  any  rate  still  says  "yes"  to  life. 


12. 


I  cannot  refrain  at  this  juncture  from  uttering  a  sigh 
and  one  last  hope.  What  is  it  precisely  which  I  find 
intolerable?  That  which  I  alone  cannot  get  rid  of, 
which  makes  me  choke  and  faint?     Bad  air!     Bad  air! 


26  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

That  something  misbegotten  comes  near  me;  that  I  must 
inhale  the  odour  of  the  entrails  of  a  misbegotten  soul! — ■ 
That  excepted,  what  can  one  not  endure  in  the  way  of 
need,  privation,  bad  weather,  sickness,  toil,  solitude?  In 
point  of  fact,  one  manages  to  get  over  everything,  born 
as  one  is  to  a  burrowing  and  battling  existence;  one 
always  returns  once  again  to  the  light,  one  always  lives 
again  one's  golden  hour  of  victory — and  then  one  stands 
as  one  was  born,  unbreakable,  tense,  ready  for  some- 
thing more  difficult,  for  something  more  distant,  like  a 
bow  stretched  but  the  tauter  by  every  strain,  ftut  from 
time  to  time  do  ye  grant  me — assuming  that  "beyond 
good  and  evil"  there  are  goddesses  who  can  grant — one 
glimpse,  grant  me  but  one  glimpse  only,  of  something 
perfect,  fully  realised,  happy,  mighty,  triumphant,  of 
something  that  still  gives  cause  for  fear!  A  glimpse  of 
a  man  that  justifies  the  existence  of  man,  a  glimpse  of 
an  incarnate  human  happiness  that  realises  and  redeems, 
for  the  sake  of  which  one  may  hold  fast  to  the  belie]  in 
man!  For  the  position  is  this:  in  the  dwarfing  and  level- 
ling of  the  European  man  lurks  our  greatest  peril,  for 
it  is  this  outlook  which  fatigues — we  see  to-day  nothing 
which  wishes  to  be  greater,  we  surmise  that  the  process 
is  always  still  backwards,  still  backwards  towards  some- 
thing more  attentuated,  more  inoffensive,  more  cunning, 
more  comfortable,  more  mediocre,  more  indifferent,  more 
Chinese,  more  Christian — man,  there  is  no  doubt  about  it, 
grows  always  "better" — the  destiny  of  Europe  lies  even 
in  this — that  in  losing  the  fear  of  man,  we  have  also  lost 
the  hope  in  man,  yea,  the  will  to  be  man.  The  «iuht  of 
man  now  fatigues. — What  is  present-day  Nihilism  if  it  is 
n.)t  that? — We  are  tired  of  man. 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      27 


13- 

But  let  us  come  back  to  it;  the  problem  of  another 
origin  of  the  good — of  the  good,  as  the  resentful  man 
has  thought  it  out — demands  its  solution.  It  is  not  sur- 
prising that  the  lambs  should  bear  a  grudge  against  the 
great  birds  of  prey,  but  that  is  no  reason  for  blaming 
the  great  birds  of  prey  for  taking  the  little  lambs.  And 
when  the  lambs  say  among  themselves,  "Those  birds  of 
prey  are  evil,  and  he  who  is  as  far  removed  from  being 
a  bird  of  prey,  who  is  rather  its  opposite,  a  lamb, — is 
he  not  good?"  then  there  is  nothing  to  cavil  at  in  the 
setting  up  of  this  ideal,  though  it  may  also  be  that  the 
birds  of  prey  will  regard  it  a  little  sneeringly,  and  per- 
chance say  to  themselves,  "We  bear  no  grudge  against 
them,  these  good  lambs,  we  even  like  them:  nothing  is 
tastier  than  a  tender  lamb."  To  require  of  strength  that 
it  should  not  express  itself  as  strength,  that  it  should  not 
be  a  wish  to  overpower,  a  wish  to  overthrow,  a  wish  to 
become  master,  a  thirst  for  enemies  and  antagonisms  and 
triumphs,  is  just  as  absurd  as  to  require  of  weakness 
that  it  should  express  itself  as  strength.  A  quantum  of 
force  is  just  such  a  quantum  of  movement,  will,  action — 
rather  it  is  nothing  else  than  just  those  very  phenomena 
of  moving,  willing,  acting,  and  can  only  appear  other- 
wise in  the  misleading  errors  of  language  (and  the  funda- 
mental fallacies  of  reason  which  have  become  petrified 
therein),  which  understands,  and  understands  wrongly, 
all  working  as  conditioned  by  a  worker,  by  a  "subject." 
And  just  exactly  as  the  people  separate  the  lightning  from 


28  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

its  flash,  and  interpret  the  latter  as  a  thing  done,  as  the 
working  of  a  subject  which  is  called  lightning,  so  also 
does  the  popular  morality  separate  strength  from  the 
expression  of  strength,  as  though  behind  the  strong  man 
there  existed  some  indifferent  neutral  substratum,  which 
enjoyed  a  caprice  and  option  as  to  whether  or  not  it 
should  express  strength.  But  there  is  no  such  substratum, 
there  is  no  "being"  behind  doing,  working,  becoming; 
"the  doer"  is  a  mere  appanage  to  the  action.  The  action 
is  everything.  In  point  of  fact,  the  people  duplicate  the 
doing,  when  they  make  the  lightning  lighten,  that  is  a 
"doing-doing";  they  make  the  same  phenomenon  first  a 
cause,  and  then,  secondly,  the  effect  of  that  cause.  The 
scientists  fail  to  improve  matters  when  they  say,  "Force 
moves,  force  causes,"  and  so  on.  Our  whole  science  is 
still,  in  spite  of  all  its  coldness,  of  all  its  freedom  from 
passion,  a  dupe  of  the  tricks  of  language,  and  has  never 
succeeded  in  getting  rid  of  that  superstitious  changeling 
"the  subject"  (the  atom,  to  give  another  instance,  is 
such  a  changeling,  just  as  the  Kantian  "Thing-in-itself"). 
■\Yhat  wonder,  if  the  suppressed  and  stealthily  simmer- 
ing passions  of  revenge  and  hatred  i  xploit  for  their  own 
advantage  their  belief,  and  indeed  hold  no  belief  with  | 
more  steadfast  enthusiasm  than  this — "that  the  strong 
has  the  option  of  being  weak,  and  the  bird  of  prey  of 
being  a  lamb."  Thereby  do  they  win  for  themselves  the 
ht  of  attributing  to  the  birds  of  prey  the  responsibility 
for  being  birds  of  prey:  when  the  oppressed,  down- 
trodden, and  overpowered  say  to  themselves  with  1 
\  indictive  guile  of  weakness.  "Let  us  be  otherwise  th. 
evil,  namely,  good!  and  good  is  every  one  who  d< 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      29 

not  oppress,  who  hurts  no  one,  who  does  not  attack,  who 
does  not  pay  back,  who  hands  over  revenge  to  God,  who 
holds  himself,  as  we  do,  in  hiding;  who  goes  out  of  the 
way  of  evil,  and  demands,  in  short,  little  from  life;  like 
ourselves  the  patient,  the  meek,  the  just," — yet  all  this, 
in  its  cold  and  unprejudiced  interpretation,  means  noth- 
ing more  than  "once  for  all,  the  weak  are  weak;  it  is 
good  to  do  nothing  for  which  we  are  not  strong  enough"; 
but  this  dismal  state  of  affairs,  this  prudence  of  the  lowest 
order,  which  even  insects  possess  (which  in  a  great  danger 
are  fain  to  sham  death  so  as  to  avoid  doing  "too  much"), 
has,  thanks  to  the  counterfeiting  and  self-deception  of 
weakness,  come  to  masquerade  in  the  pomp  of  an  ascetic, 
mute,  and  expectant  virtue,  just  as  though  the  very  weak- 
ness of  the  weak — that  is,  forsooth,  its  being,  its  working, 
its  whole  unique  inevitable  inseparable  reality — were  a 
voluntary  result,  something  wished,  chosen,  a  deed,  an  act 
of  merit.  This  kind  of  man  finds  the  belief  in  a  neutral, 
free-choosing  "subject"  necessary  from  an  instinct  of  self- 
preservation,  of  self-assertion,  in  which  every  lie  is  fain 
to  sanctify  itself.  The  subject  (or,  to  use  popular  lan- 
guage, the  soul)  has  perhaps  proved  itself  the  best  dogma 
in  the  world  simply  because  it  rendered  possible  to  th 
horde  of  mortal,  weak,  and  oppressed  individuals  of 
every  kind,  that  most  sublime  specimen  of  self-deception, 
the  interpretation  of  weakness  as  freedom,  of  being  this, 
or  being  that,  as  merit. 

14. 

Will  any  one  look  a  little  into — right  into — the  mystery 


3o  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

of  how  ideals  are  ma?iujactured  in  this  world?  Who  has 
the  courage  to  do  it?    Come! 

Here  we  have  a  vista  opened  into  these  grimy  work- 
shops. Wait  just  a  moment,  dear  Mr.  Inquisitive  and 
Foolhardy;  your  eye  must  first  grow  accustomed  to  this 
false  changing  light — Yes!  Enough!  Xow  speak! 
What  is  happening  below  down  yonder?  Speak  out!  Tell 
what  you  see,  man  of  the  most  dangerous  curiosity — for 
now  /  am  the  listener. 

"I  see  nothing,  I  hear  the  more.  It  is  a  cautious, 
spiteful,  gentle  whispering  and  muttering  together  in  all 
the  corners  and  crannies.  It  seems  to  me  that  they  are 
lying;  a  sugary  softness  adheres  to  every  sound.  Weak- 
ness is  turned  to  merit,  there  is  no  doubt  about  it — it  is 
just  as  ycu  say." 

Further ! 

"And  the  impotence  which  requites  not,  is  turned  to 
'goodness,'  craven  baseness  to  meekness,  submission  to 
those  whom  one  hates,  to  obedience  (namely,  obedience 
to  one  of  whom  they  say  that  he  ordered  this  submis- 
sion— they  call  him  God).  The  inoffensive  character  of 
the  weak,  the  very  cowardice  in  which  he  is  rich,  his 
standing  at  the  door,  his  forced  necessity  of  waiting, 
gain  here  fine  names,  such  as  'patience,'  which  is  also 
called  'virtue1;  not  being  able  to  avenge  one's  self,  is 
called  not  wishing  to  avenge  one's  self,  perhaps  even 
forgiveness  (for  they  know  not  what  they  do — we  alone 
know  what  they  do).  They  also  talk  of  the  'love  of  their 
enemies'  and  sweat  thereby." 

Further! 

"They  are  miserable,  there  is  no  doubt  about  it,  all 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      31 

these  whisperers  and  counterfeiters  in  the  corners,  al- 
though they  try  to  get  warm  by  crouching  close  to  each 
other,  but  they  tell  me  that  their  misery  is  a  favour  and 
distinction  given  to  them  by  God,  just  as  one  beats  the 
dogs  one  likes  best;  that  perhaps  this  misery  is  also  a 
preparation,  a  probation,  a  training;  that  perhaps  it  is 
still  more  something  which  will  one  day  be  compensated 
and  paid  back  with  a  tremendous  interest  in  gold,  nay  in 
happiness.    This  they  call  'Blessedness.'  " 

Further ! 

"They  are  now  giving  me  to  understand,  that  not 
only  aie  they  better  men  than  the  mighty,  the  lords 
of  the  earth,  whose  spittle  they  have  got  to  lick  {not 
out  of  fear,  not  at  all  out  of  fear!  But  because  God 
ordains  that  one  should  honour  all  authority) — not  only 
are  they  better  men,  but  that  they  also  have  a  'better 
time,'  at  any  rate,  will  one  day  have  a  'better  time.' 
But  enough!  Enough!  I  can  endure  it  no  longer.  Bad 
air!  Bad  air!  These  workshops  where  ideals  are  manu- 
factured— verily  they  reek  with  the  crassest  lies." 

Nay.  Just  one  minute!  You  are  saying  nothing  about 
the  masterpieces  of  these  virtuosos  of  black  magic,  who 
can  produce  whiteness,  milk,  and  innocence  out  of  any 
black  you  like:  have  you  not  noticed  what  a  pitch  of 
refinement  is  attained  by  their  chef  d'ceuvre,  their  most 
audacious,  subtle,  ingenious,  and  lying  artist-trick?  Take 
care!  These  cellar-beasts,  full  of  revenge  and  hate — 
what  do  they  make,  forsooth,  out  of  their  revenge  and 
hate?  Do  you  hear  these  words?  Would  you  suspect, 
if  you  trusted  only  their  words,  that  you  are  among  men 
of  resentment  and  nothing  else? 


3 


2  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 


''I  understand,  I  prick  my  ears  up  again  (ah!  ah!  ah! 
and  I  hold  my  nose).  Now  do  I  hear  for  the  first  time 
that  which  they  have  said  so  often:  'We  good,  we  are 
the  righteous' — what  they  demand  they  call  not  revenge 
but  fthe  triumph  of  righteousness' ;  what  they  hate  is  not 
their  enemy,  no,  they  hate  'unrighteousness,'  'godless- 
ness';  what  they  believe  in  and  hope  is  not  the  hope  of 
revenge,  the  intoxication  of  sweet  revenge  ( — "sweeter 
than  honey,"  did  Homer  call  it?),  but  the  victory  of 
God,  of  the  righteous  God  over  the  'godless';  what  is 
left  for  them  to  love  in  this  world  is  not  their  brothers  in 
hate,  but  their  'brothers  in  love,'  as  they  say,  all  the  good 
and  righteous  on  the  earth." 

And  how  do  they  name  that  which  serves  them  as  a 
solace  against  all  the  troubles  of  life — their  phantasma- 
goria of  their  anticipated  future  blessedness? 

"How?  Do  I  hear  right?  They  call  it  'the  last  judg- 
ment,' the  advent  of  their  kingdom,  'the  kingdom  of  God' 
— but  in  the  meanwhile  they  live  'in  faith,'  'in  love,'  'in 
hope.'  " 

Enough !     Enough ! 


IS- 


In  the  faith  in  what?  In  the  love  for  what?  In  the 
hope  of  what?  These  weaklings! — they  also,  forsooth, 
wish  to  be  strong  some  time;  there  is  no  doubt  about  it. 
some  time  their  kingdom  also  must  come — "the  kingdom 
of  God"  is  their  name  for  it,  as  has  been  mentioned: — 
they  are  so  meek  in  everything!  Yet  in  order  to  ex- 
perience that  kingdom  it  is  necessary  to  live  long,  to  live 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      33 

beyond  death, — yes,  eternal  life  is  necessary  so  that  one 
can  make  up  for  ever  for  that  earthly  life  "in  faith,"  "in 
love,"  "in  hope."  Make  up  for  what?  Make  up  by 
what?  Dante,  as  it  seems  to  me,  made  a  crass  mistake 
when  with  awe-inspiring  ingenuity  he  placed  that  inscrip- 
tion over  the  gate  of  his  hell,  "Me  too  made  eternal 
love":  at  any  rate  the  following  inscription  would  have  a 
much  better  right  to  stand  over  the  gate  of  the  Christian 
Paradise  and  its  "eternal  blessedness" — "Me  too  made 
eternal  hate" — granted  of  course  that  a  truth  may  rightly 
stand  over  the  gate  to  a  lie!  For  what  is  the  blessed- 
ness of  that  Paradise?  Possibly  we  could  quickly  sur- 
mise it;  but  it  is  better  that  it  should  be  explicitly 
attested  by  an  authority  who  in  such  matters  is  not  to 
be  disparaged,  Thomas  of  Aquinas,  the  great  teacher  and 
saint.  "Beati  in  regno  celesti,"  says  he,  as  gently  as  a 
lamb,  "videbunt  pcenas  damnatorum,  ut  beatitudo  Mis 
magis  complaceat."  Or  if  we  wish  to  hear  a  stronger 
tone,  a  word  from  the  mouth  of  a  triumphant  father  of 
the  Church,  who  warned  his  disciples  against  the  cruel 
ecstasies  of  the  public  spectacles — But  why?  Faith  offers 
us  much  more, — says  he,  de  Spectac,  c.  29  ss., — some- 
thing much  stronger;  thanks  to  the  redemption,  joys  of 
quite  another  kind  stand  at  our  disposal;  instead  of 
athletes  we  have  our  martyrs;  we  wish  for  blood,  well, 
we  have  the  blood  of  Christ — but  what  then  awaits  us  on 
the  day  of  his  return,  of  his  triumph?  And  then  does  he 
proceed,  does  this  enraptured  visionary:  "at  enim  super- 
sunt  alia  spectacula,  Me  ultimas  et  perpetuus  judicii  dies, 
Me  nationibus  insperatus,  Me  derisus,  cum  tanta  sceculi 
vetustas  et  tot  ejus  nativitates  uno  igne  haurientur.    Quce 


34  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

tunc  spectaculi  latitudo!  Quid  admirer!  quid  ridcam! 
Ubi  gaudeam!  Ubi  exultem,  spectans  tot  ct  tantos  reges, 
qui  in  caelum  recepti  nuntiabantur,  cum  ipso  Jove  el 
ipsis  suis  testibus  in  imis  tenebris  congemesccntes!  Item 
presides"  (the  provisional  governors)  "persecutores  dom- 
inici  notninis  sevvioribus  quam  ipsi  flammis  sccvierunt  in- 
sultantibus  contra  CJtristianos  liquescentcs!  Quos  prccterea 
sapientes  illos  philosop/ios  coram  discipulis  suis  una  con- 
flagrantibus  erubescentes,  quibus  nihil  ad  deum  pcrtih 
suadebant,  quibus  animas  aut  nullas  aut  non  in  pristina 
corpora  redituras  affirmabant!  Etiam  poet  as  non  ad 
Rhadamanti  nee  ad  Minois,  sed  ad  inopinati  Christi 
tribunal  palpitantes!  Tunc  magis  tragecdi  audiendi, 
magis  scilicet  vocales"  (with  louder  tones  and  more  vio- 
lent shrieks)  "in  sua  propria  calamitate;  tunc  liistriones 
cognoscendi,  solutiorcs  multo  per  ignem;  tunc  spectandus 
auriga  in  flammea  rota  totus  rubens,  tunc  xystici  contem- 
pl-andi  non  in  gymnasiis,  sed  in  igiie  jacidati,  nisi  quod  nc 
tunc  quidem  illos  velim  vivos,  ut  qui  malim  ad  eos  potius 
conspectum  insatiabilem  conjerre,  qui  in  dominum 
scevierunt.  Hie  est  illes,  dicam  fabri  aut  qiKCstuario  films" 
(as  is  shown  by  the  whole  of  the  following,  and  in  par- 
ticular by  this  well-known  description  of  the  mother  of 
Jesus  from  the  Talmud,  Tertullian  is  henceforth  refer- 
ring to  the  Jews),  "sabbati  destructor,  Samarites  et 
decmoniurn  habeus.  Hie  est  quern  a  Juda  redemises,  hie 
est  ille  arundine  et  colaphis  diverberatus,  sputatnentis  de 
decoratus,  jelle  ct  aceto  potatus.  Hie  est,  quern  clanu 
discentes  subripiuruni,  ut  resurradsse  dicatur  vel  hortu- 
lanus  detraxit,  ne  lactuccc  sua-  jrcqucntia  commcantiitr,: 
Iccdtrcntur.     Ut  talia  spectes,  ut  talibus  cxultcs,  quis  / 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      35 

prcetor  aut  consul  aut  sacerdos  de  sua  liber alii ate 
prcestabit?  Et  tamen  hcec  jam  habemus  quodammodo 
per  fidem  spiritu  imaginante  reprcesentata.  Ceterum 
qualia  ilia  sunt,  quce  nee  oculus  vidit  nee  auris  audivit 
nee  in  cor  hominis  ascenderunt?"  (I  Cor.  ii.  9.)  "Credo 
circo  et  utraque  cavea"  (first  and  fourth  row,  or,  accord- 
ing to  others,  the  comic  and  the  tragic  stage)  "et  omni 
studio  gratiora."    Per  fidem:  so  stands  it  written. 


16. 


Let  us  come  to  a  conclusion.  The  two  opposing  values, 
"good  and  bad,"  "good  and  evil,"  have  fought  a  dread- 
ful, thousand-year  fight  in  the  world,  and  though  indubit- 
ably the  second  value  has  been  for  a  long  time  in  the 
preponderance,  there  are  not  wanting  places  where  the 
fortune  of  the  fight  is  still  undecisive.  It  can  almost  be 
said  that  in  the  meanwhile  the  fight  reaches  a  higher 
and  higher  level,  and  that  in  the  meanwhile  it  has  be- 
come more  and  more  intense,  and  always  more  and  more 
psychological;  so  that  nowadays  there  is  perhaps  no  more 
decisive  mark  of  the  higher  nature,  of  the  more  psycho- 
logical nature,  than  to  be  in  that  sense  self-contradictory, 
and  to  be  actually  still  a  battleground  for  those  two 
opposites.  The  symbol  of  this  fight,  written  in  a  writing 
which  has  remained  worthy  of  perusal  throughout  the 
course  of  history  up  to  the  present  time,  is  called  "Rome 
against  Judaea,  Judaea  against  Rome."  Hitherto  there  has 
been  no  greater  event  than  that  fight,  the  putting  of  that 
question,  that  deadly  antagonism.  Rome  found  in  the 
Jew  the  incarnation  of  the  unnatural,  as  though  it  were 


36  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

its  diametrically  opposed  monstrosity,  and  in  Rome  the 
Jew  was  held  to  be  convicted  oj  hatred  of  the  whole 
human  race:  and  rightly  so,  in  so  far  as  it  is  right  to  link 
the  well-being  and  the  future  of  the  human  race  to  the 
unconditional  mastery  of  the  aristocratic  values,  of  the 
Roman  values.  What,  conversely,  did  the  Jews  feel 
against  Rome?  One  can  surmise  it  from  a  thousand 
symptoms,  but  it  is  sufficient  to  carry  one's  mind  back,  to 
the  Johannian  Apocalypse,  that  most  obscene  of  all  the 
written  outbursts,  which  has  revenge  on  its  conscience. 
(One  should  also  appraise  at  its  full  value  the  profound 
logic  of  the  Christian  instinct,  when  over  this  very  book 
of  hate  it  wrote  the  name  of  the  Disciple  of  Love,  that 
self-same  disciple  to  whom  it  attributed  that  impassioned 
and  ecstatic  Gospel — therein  lurks  a  portion  of  truth, 
however  much  literary  forging  may  have  been  necessary 
for  this  purpose.)  The  Romans  were  the  strong  and 
aristocratic;  a  nation  stronger  and  more  aristocratic  has 
never  existed  in  the  world,  has  never  even  been  dreamed 
of;  every  relic  of  them,  every  inscription  enraptures, 
granted  that  one  can  divine  what  it  is  that  writes  the 
inscription.  The  Jews,  conversely,  were  that  priestly 
nation  of  resentment  par  excellence,  possessed  by  a  unique 
genius  for  popular  morals:  just  compare  with  the  Jews 
the  nations  with  analogous  gifts,  such  as  the  Chinese  or 
the  Germans,  so  as  to  realise  afterwards  what  is  first  rate, 
and  what  is  fifth  rate. 

Which  of  them  has  been  provisionally  victorious.  Rome 
or  Judaea?  but  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  doubt;  just  con- 
sider to  whom  in  Rome  itself  nowadays  you  bow  down, 
as  though  before  the  quintessence  of  all  the  highest  values 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      37 

— and  not  only  in  Rome,  but  almost  over  half  the  world, 
everywhere  where  man  has  been  tamed  or  is  about  to  be 
tamed — to  three  Jews,  as  we  know,  and  one  Jewess  (to 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  to  Peter  the  fisher,  to  Paul  the  tent- 
maker,  and  to  the  mother  of  the  aforesaid  Jesus,  named 
Mary).  This  is  very  remarkable:  Rome  is  undoubtedly 
defeated.  At  any  rate  there  took  place  in  the  Renaissance 
a  brilliantly  sinister  revival  of  the  classical  ideal,  of  the 
aristocratic  valuation  of  all  things:  Rome  herself,  like  a 
man  waking  up  from  a  trance,  stirred  beneath  the  bur- 
Hen  of  the  new  Judaised  Rome  that  had  been  built  over 
her,  which  presented  the  appearance  of  an  oecumenical 
synagogue  and  was  called  the  "Church":  but  immediately 
Judaea  triumphed  again,  thanks  to  that  fundamentally 
popular  (German  and  English)  movement  of  revenge, 
which  is  called  the  Reformation,  and  taking  also  into 
account  its  inevitable  corollary,  the  restoration  of  the 
Church — the  restoration  also  of  the  ancient  graveyard 
peace  of  classical  Rome.  Judsea  proved  yet  once  more 
victorious  over  the  classical  ideal  in  the  French  Revo- 
lution, and  in  a  sense  which  was  even  more  crucial  and 
even  more  profound:  the  last  political  aristocracy  that 
existed  in  Europe,  that  of  the  French  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries,  broke  into  pieces  beneath  the  in- 
stincts of  a  resentful  populace — never  had  the  world  heard 
a  greater  jubilation,  a  more  uproarious  enthusiasm: 
indeed,  there  took  place  in  the  midst  of  it  the  most  mon- 
strous and  unexpected  phenomenon;  the  ancient  ideal 
itself  swept  before  the  eyes  and  conscience  of  humanity 
with  all  its  life  and  with  unheard-of  splendour,  and  in 
opposition  to  resentment's  lying  war-cry  of  the  preroga- 


38  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

the  of  the  most,  in  opposition  to  the  will  to  lowliness, 
abasement,  and  equalisation,  the  will  to  a  retrogression 
and  twilight  of  humanity,  there  rang  out  once  again, 
stronger,  simpler,  more  penetrating  than  ever,  the  ter- 
rible and  enchanting  counter-war-cry  of  the  prerogative  of 
the  few!  Like  a  final  sign-post  to  other  ways,  there 
appeared  Napoleon,  the  most  unique  and  violent  anach- 
ronism that  ever  existed,  and  in  him  the  incarnate  problem 
of  the  aristocratic  ideal  in  itself — consider  well  what  a 
problem  it  is: — Napoleon,  that  synthesis  of  Monster  and 
Superman. 

17. 

Was  it  therewith  over?  Was  that  greatest  of  all  an- 
titheses of  ideals  thereby  relegated  ad  acta  for  all  time? 
Or  only  postponed,  postponed  for  a  long  time?  May 
there  not  take  place  at  some  time  or  other  a  much  more 
awful,  much  more  carefully  prepared  flaring  up  of  the 
old  conflagration?  Further!  Should  not  one  wish  that 
consummation  with  all  one's  strength? — will  it  one's  self? 
demand  it  one's  self?  He  who  at  this  juncture  begins, 
like  my  readers,  to  reflect,  to  think  further,  will  have 
difficulty  in  coming  quickly  to  a  conclusion, — ground 
enough  for  me  to  come  myself  to  a  conclusion,  taking  it 
for  granted  that  for  some  time  past  what  I  mean  has  been 
sufficiently  clear,  what  I  exactly  mean  by  that  dangerous 
motto  which  is  inscribed  on  the  body  of  my  last  book: 
Beyond  Good  and  Evil — at  any  rate  that  is  not  the  same 
as  "Beyond  Good  and  Bad." 


"GOOD  AND  EVIL,"  "GOOD  AND  BAD"      39 

Note. — I  avail  myself  of  the  opportunity  offered  by  this 
treatise  to  express,  openly  and  formally,  a  wish  which  up  to 
the  present  has  only  been  expressed  in  occasional  conversa- 
tions with  scholars,  namely,  that  some  Faculty  of  philosophy 
should,  by  means  of  a  series  of  prize  essays,  gain  the  glory 
of  having  promoted  the  further  study  of  the  history  of  mor- 
als— perhaps  this  book  may  serve  to  give  a  forcible  impetus 
in  such  a  direction.  With  regard  to  a  possibility  of  this  char- 
acter, the  following  question  deserves  consideration.  It  mer- 
its quite  as  much  the  attention  of  philologists  and  historians 
as  of  actual  professional  philosophers. 

"What  indication  of  the  history  of  the  evolution  of  the  moral 
ideas  is  afforded  by  philology,  and  especially  by  etymological 
investigation  ?" 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is,  of  course,  equally  necessary  to 
induce  physiologists  and  doctors  to  be  interested  in  these 
problems  (of  the  value  of  the  valuations  which  have  prevailed 
up  to  the  present)  :  in  this  connection  the  professional  philo- 
sophers may  be  trusted  to  act  as  the  spokesmen  and  inter- 
mediaries in  these  particular  instances,  after,  of  course,  they 
have  quite  succeeded  in  transforming  the  relationship  between 
philosophy  and  physiology  and  medicine,  which  is  originally 
one  of  coldness  and  suspicion,  into  the  most  friendly  and  fruit- 
ful reciprocity.  In  point  of  fact,  all  tables  of  values,  all  the 
"thou  shalts"  known  to  history  and  ethnology,  need  primarily 
a  physiological,  at  any  rate  in  preference  to  a  psychological, 
elucidation  and  interpretation :  all  equally  require  a  critique 
from  medical  science.  The  question,  "What  is  the  value 
of  this  or  that  table  of  'values'  and  morality?"  will  be  asked 
from  the  most  varied  standpoints.  For  instance,  the  question 
of  "valuable  for  what"  can  never  be  analysed  with  sufficient 
nicety.  That,  for  instance,  which  would  evidently  have  value 
with  regard  to  promoting  in  a  race  the  greatest  possible  powers 
of  endurance  (or  with  regard  to  increasing  its  adaptability 
to  a  specific  climate,  or  with  regard  to  the  preservation  of  the 
greatest  number)  would  have  nothing  like  the  same  value,  if 
it  were  a  question  of  evolving  a  stronger  species.  In  gauging 
values,  the  good  of  the  majority  and  the  good  of  the  minority 
are  opposed  standpoints :  we  leave  it  to  the  naivete  of  English 
biologists  to  regard  the  former  standpoint  as  intrinsically 
superior.  All  the  sciences  have  now  to  pave  the  way  for  the 
future  task  of  the  philosopher ;  this  task  being  understood  to 
mean,  that  he  must  solve  the  problem  of  value,  that  he  has  to 
fix  the  hierarchy  of  values. 


SECOND  ESSAY 

"GUILT,"  "BAD  CONSCIENCE,"  AND  THE  LIKE 

i. 

The  breeding  of  an  animal  that  can  promise — is  not 
this  just  that  very  paradox  of  a  task  which  nature  has 
set  itself  in  regard  to  man?  Is  not  this  the  very  problem 
of  man?  The  fact  that  this  problem  has  been  to  a  great 
extent  solved,  must  appear  all  the  more  phenomenal  to 
one  who  can  estimate  at  its  full  value  that  force  of 
jorgetfulness  which  works  in  opposition  to  it.  Forgetful- 
ness  is  no  mere  vis  inertia:,  as  the  superficial  believe, 
rather  is  it  a  power  of  obstruction,  active  and,  in  the 
strictest  sense  of  the  word,  positive — a  power  responsible 
for  the  fact  that  what  we  have  lived,  experienced,  taken 
into  ourselves,  no  more  enters  into  consciousness  during 
the  process  of  digestion  (it  might  be  called  psychic  ab- 
sorption) than  all  the  whole  manifold  process  by  which 
our  physical  nutrition,  the  so-called  "incorporation,"  is 
carried  on.  The  temporary  shutting  of  the  doors  and 
windows  of  consciousness,  the  relief  from  the  clamant 
alarums  and  excursions,  with  which  our  subconscious 
world  of  servant  organs  works  in  mutual  co-operation  and 
antagonism;  a  little  quietude,  a  little  tabula  rasa  of  the 

40 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  41 

consciousness,  so  as  to  make  room  again  for  the  new,  and 
above  all  for  the  more  noble  functions  and  functionaries, 
room  for  government,  foresight,  predetermination  (for 
our  organism  is  on  an  oligarchic  model) — this  is  the  util- 
ity, as  I  have  said,  of  the  active  forgetfulness,  which 
is  a  very  sentinel  and  nurse  of  psychic  order,  repose, 
etiquette;  and  this  shows  at  once  why  it  is  that  there  can 
exist  no  happiness,  no  gladness,  no  hope,  no  pride,  no 
real  present,  without  forgetfulness.  The  man  in  whom 
this  preventative  apparatus  is  damaged  and  discarded,  is 
to  be  compared  to  a  dyspeptic,  and  it  is  something  more 
than  a  comparison — he  can  "get  rid  of"  nothing.  But 
this  very  animal  who  finds  it  necessary  to  be  forgetful, 
in  whom,  in  fact,  forgetfulness  represents  a  force  and  a 
form  of  robust  health,  has  reared  for  himself  an  opposi- 
tion-power, a  memory,  with  whose  help  forgetfulness  is, 
in  certain  instances,  kept  in  check — in  the  cases,  namely, 
where  promises  have  to  be  made; — so  that  it  is  by  no 
means  a  mere  passive  inability  to  get  rid  of  a  once  in- 
dented impression,  not  merely  the  indigestion  occasioned 
by  a  once  pledged  word,  which  one  cannot  dispose  of,  but 
an  active  refusal  to  get  rid  of  it,  a  continuing  and  a  wish 
to  continue  what  has  once  been  willed,  an  actual  memory 
of  the  will;  so  that  between  the  original  "I  will,"  "I  shall 
do,"  and  the  actual  discharge  of  the  will,  its  act,  we  can 
easily  interpose  a  world  of  new  strange  phenomena,  cir- 
cumstances, veritable  volitions,  without  the  snapping  of 
this  long  chain  of  the  will.  But  what  is  the  underlying 
hypothesis  of  all  this?  How  thoroughly,  in  order  to  be 
able  to  regulate  the  future  in  this  way,  must  man  have 
first  learnt  to  distinguish  between  necessitated  and  acci- 


42  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

dental  phenomena,  to  think  casually,  to  see  the  distant 
as  present  and  to  anticipate  it,  to  fix  with  certainty  what 
is  the  end,  and  what  is  the  means  to  that  end;  above 
all,  to  reckon,  to  have  power  to  calculate — how  thor- 
oughly must  man  have  first  become  calculable,  disciplined, 
necessitated  even  for  himself  and  his  own  conception  of 
himself,  that,  like  a  man  entering  a  promise,  he  could 
guarantee  himself  as  a  future. 


2. 


This  is  simply  the  long  history  of  the  origin  of  respon- 
sibility. That  task  of  breeding  an  animal  which  can 
make  promises,  includes,  as  we  have  already  grasped,  as 
its  condition  and  preliminary,  the  more  immediate  task 
of  first  making  man  to  a  certain  extent,  necessitated, 
uniform,  like  among  his  like,  regular,  and  consequently 
calculable.  The  immense  work  of  what  I  have  called, 
"morality  of  custom"*  (cp.  Dawn  oj  Day,  Aphs.  9,  14, 
and  16),  the  actual  work  of  man  on  himself  during  the 
longest  period  of  the  human  race,  his  whole  prehistoric 
work,  finds  its  meaning,  its  great  justification  (in  spite  of 
all  its  innate  hardness,  despotism,  stupidity,  and  idiocy) 
in  this  fact:  man,  with  the  help  of  the  morality  of  cus- 
toms and  of  social  strait-waistcoats,  was  made  genuinely 
calculable.  If,  however,  we  place  ourselves  at  the  end  of 
this  colossal  process,  at  the  point  where  the  tree  finally 
matures  its  fruits,  when  society  and  its  morality  of  custom 
finally  bring  to  light  that  to  which  it  was  only  the  means, 
then  do  we  find  as  the  ripest  fruit  on  its  tree  the  sovereign 


*  The  German  is :  "Sittlichkeit  der  Sitte."    H.  B.  S. 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  43 

individual,  that  resembles  only  himself,  that  has  got  loose 
from  the  morality  of  custom,  the  autonomous  "super- 
moral"  individual  (for  "autonomous"  and  "moral"  are 
mutually  exclusive  terms), — in  short,  the  man  of  the  per- 
sonal, long,  and  independent  will,  competent  to  promise, 
— and  we  find  in  him  a  proud  consciousness  (vibrating 
in  every  fibre),  of  what  has  been  at  last  achieved  and 
become  vivified  in  him,  a  genuine  consciousness  of  power 
and  freedom,  a  feeling  of  human  perfection  in  general. 
And  this  man  who  has  grown  to  freedom,  who  is  really 
competent  to  promise,  this  lord  of  the  jree  will,  this  sov- 
ereign— how  is  it  possible  for  him  not  to  know  how  great 
is  his  superiority  over  everything  incapable  of  binding 
itself  by  promises,  or  of  being  its  own  security,  how  great 
is  the  trust,  the  awe,  the  reverence  that  he  awakes — he 
"deserves"  all  three — not  to  know  that  with  this  mastery 
over  himself  he  is  necessarily  also  given  the  mastery  over 
circumstances,  over  nature,  over  all  creatures  with  shorter 
wills,  less  reliable  characters?  The  "free"  man,  the  owner 
of  a  long  unbreakable  will,  finds  in  this  possession  his 
standard  of  value:  looking  out  from  himself  upon  the 
others,  he  honours  or  he  despises,  and  just  as  necessarily 
as  he  honours  his  peers,  the  strong  and  the  reliable  (those 
who  can  bind  themselves  by  promises), — that  is,  every 
one  who  promises  like  a  sovereign,  with  difficulty,  rarely 
and  slowly,  who  is  sparing  with  his  trusts  but  confers 
honour  by  the  very  fact  of  trusting,  who  gives  his  word 
as  something  that  can  be  relied  on,  because  he  knows 
himself  strong  enough  to  keep  it  even  in  the  teeth  of 
disasters,  even  in  the  "teeth  of  fate," — so  with  equal 
necessity  will  he  have  the  heel  of  his  foot  ready  for  the 


44  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

lean  and  empty  jackasses,  who  promise  when  they  have 
no  business  to  do  so,  and  his  rod  of  chastisement  ready 
for  the  liar,  who  already  breaks  his  word  at  the  very 
minute  when  it  is  on  his  lips.  The  proud  knowledge  of 
the  extraordinary  privilege  of  responsibility,  the  con- 
sciousness of  this  rare  freedom,  of  this  power  over  him- 
self and  over  fate,  has  sunk  right  down  to  his  innermost 
depths,  and  has  become  an  instinct,  a  dominating  instinct 
— what  name  will  he  give  to  it,  to  this  dominating  instinct, 
if  he  needs  to  have  a  word  for  it?  But  there  is  no  doubt 
about  it — the  sovereign  man  calls  it  his  conscience. 


His  conscience? — One  apprehends  at  once  that  the  idea 
"conscience,"  which  is  here  seen  in  its  supreme  mani- 
festation, supreme  in  fact  to  almost  the  point  of  strange- 
ness, should  already  have  behind  it  a  long  history  and 
evolution.  The  ability  to  guarantee  one's  self  with  all 
due  pride,  and  also  at  the  same  time  to  say  yes  to  one's 
self — that  is,  as  has  been  said,  a  ripe  fruit,  but  also  a  late 
fruit: — How  long  must  needs  this  fruit  hang  sour  and 
bitter  on  the  tree!  And  for  an  even  longer  period  there 
was  not  a  glimpse  of  such  a  fruit  to  be  had — no  one  had 
taken  it  on  himself  to  promise  it,  although  everything 
on  the  tree  was  quite  ready  for  it,  and  everything  was 
maturing  for  that  very  consummation.  ''How  is  a  mem- 
ory to  be  made  for  the  man-animal?  How  is  an  im- 
pression to  be  so  deeply  fixed  upon  this  ephemeral  under- 
standing, half  dense,  and  half  silly,  upon  this  incarnate 
forgetfulness,  that  it  will  be  permanently  present?''     As 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  45 

one  may  imagine,  this  primeval  problem  was  not  solved 
by  exactly  gentle  answers  and  gentle  means;  perhaps 
there  is  nothing  more  awful  and  more  sinister  in  the  early 
history  of  man  than  his  system  of  mnemonics.  "Some- 
thing is  burnt  in  so  as  to  remain  in  his  memory:  only  that 
which  never  stops  hurting  remains  in  his  memory."  This 
is  an  axiom  of  the  oldest  (unfortunately  also  the  longest) 
psychology  in  the  world.  It  might  even  be  said  that 
wherever  solemnity,  seriousness,  mystery,  and  gloomy 
colours  are  now  found  in  the  life  of  the  men  and  of  nations 
of  the  world,  there  is  some  survival  of  that  horror  which 
was  once  the  universal  concomitant  of  all  promises, 
pledges,  and  obligations.  The  past,  the  past  with  all  its 
length,  depth,  and  hardness,  wafts  to  us  its  breath,  and 
bubbles  up  in  us  again,  when  we  become  "serious." 
When  man  thinks  it  necessary  to  make  for  himself  a 
memory,  he  never  accomplishes  it  without  blood,  tortures 
and  sacrifice;  the  most  dreadful  sacrifices  and  forfeitures 
(among  them  the  sacrifice  of  the  first-born),  the  most 
loathsome  mutilation  (for  instance,  castration),  the  most 
cruel  rituals  of  all  the  religious  cults  (for  all  religions 
are  really  at  bottpm  systems  of  cruelty) — all  these  things 
originate  from  that  instinct  which  found  in  pain  its  most 
potent  mnemonic.  In  a  certain  sense  the  whole  of  asceti- 
cism is  to  be  ascribed  to  this:  certain  ideas  have  got  to 
be  made  inextinguishable,  omnipresent,  "fixed,"  with  the 
object  of  hypnotising  the  whole  nervous  and  intellectual 
system  through  these  "fixed  ideas" — and  the  ascetic 
methods  and  modes  of  life  are  the  means  of  freeing  those 
ideas  from  the  competition  of  all  other  ideas  so  as  to 
make  them  "unforgettable."     The  worse  memory  man 


46  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

had,  the  ghastlier  the  signs  presented  by  his  customs; 
the  severity  of  the  penal  laws  affords  in  particular  a 
gauge  of  the  extent  of  man's  difficulty  in  conquering 
forgetfulness,  and  in  keeping  a  few  primal  postulates  of 
social  intercourse  ever  present  to  the  minds  of  those  who 
were  the  slaves  of  every  momentary  emotion  and  every 
momentary  desire.  We  Germans  do  certainly  not  regard 
ourselves  as  an  especially  cruel  and  hard-hearted  nation, 
still  less  as  an  especially  casual  and  happy-go-lucky  one; 
but  one  has  only  to  look  at  our  old  penal  ordinances  in 
order  to  realise  what  a  lot  of  trouble  it  takes  in  the  world 
to  evolve  a  ''nation  of  thinkers"  (I  mean:  the  European 
nation  which  exhibits  at  this  very  day  the  maximum  of 
reliability,  seriousness,  bad  taste,  and  positiveness,  which 
has  on  the  strength  of  these  qualities  a  right  to  train 
every  kind  of  European  mandarin).  These  Germans  em- 
ployed terrible  means  to  make  for  themselves  a  memory. 
to  enable  them  to  master  their  rooted  plebeian  instincts 
and  the  brutal  crudity  of  those  instincts:  think  of  the  old 
German  punishments,  for  instance,  stoning  (as  far  back 
as  the  legend,  the  millstone  falls  on  the  head  of  the  guilty 
man),  breaking  on  the  wheel  (the  most  original  inven- 
tion and  speciality  of  the  German  genius  in  the  sphere 
of  punishment),  dart-throwing,  tearing,  or  trampling  by 
horses  ("'quartering"),  boiling  the  criminal  in  oil  or  wine 
(still  prevalent  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  >. 
the  highly  popular  flaying  (''slicing  into  strips"),  cutting 
the  flesh  out  of  the  breast;  think  also  of  the  evil-doer 
being  besmeared  with  honey,  and  then  exposed  to  the 
flies  in  a  blazing  sun.  It  was  by  the  help  of  such  images 
and  precedents  that  man  eventually  kept  in  his  memory 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  47 

five  or  six  "I  will  nots"  with  regard  to  which  he  had 
already  given  his  promise,  so  as  to  be  able  to  enjoy  the 
advantages  of  society — and  verily  with  the  help  of  this 
kind  of  memory  man  eventually  attained  "reason"! 
Alas!  reason,  seriousness,  mastery  over  the  emotions,  all 
these  gloomy,  dismal  things  which  are  called  reflection, 
all  these  privileges  and  pageantries  of  humanity:  how 
dear  is  the  price  that  they  have  exacted!  How  much 
blood  and  cruelty  is  the  foundation  of  all  "good  things"! 


But  how  is  it  that  that  other  melancholy  object,  the 
consciousness  of  sin,  the  whole  "bad  conscience,"  came 
into  the  world?  And  it  is  here  that  we  turn  back  to  our 
genealogists  of  morals.  For  the  second  time  I  say — or 
have  I  not  said  it  yet? — that  they  are  worth  nothing. 
Just  their  own  five-spans-long  limited  modern  experience; 
no  knowledge  of  the  past,  and  no  wish  to  know  it;  still 
less  a  historic  instinct,  a  power  of  "second  sight"  (which 
is  what  is  really  required  in  this  case) — and  despite  this 
to  go  in  for  the  history  of  morals.  It  stands  to  reason 
that  this  must  needs  produce  results  which  are  removed 
from  the  truth  by  something  more  than  a  respectful  dis- 
tance. 

Have  these  current  genealogists  of  morals  ever  allowed 
themselves  to  have  even  the  vaguest  notion,  for  instance, 
that  the  cardinal  moral  idea  of  "ought"  *  originates  from 


*  The  German  word  "schuld"  means  both  debt  and  guilt. 
Cp.  the  English  "owe"  and  "ought,"  by  which  I  occasionally 
render  the  double  meaning. — H.  B.  S. 


4S  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

the  very  material  idea  of  "owe"?  Or  that  punishment 
developed  as  a  retaliation  absolutely  independently  of  any 
preliminary  hypothesis  of  the  freedom  or  determination  of 
the  will? — And  this  to  such  an  extent,  that  a  high  degree 
of  civilisation  was  always  first  necessary  for  the  animal 
man  to  begin  to  make  those  much  more  primitive  dis- 
tinctions of  "intentional,"  "negligent,"  "accidental,"  "re- 
sponsible," and  their  contraries,  and  apply  them  in  the 
assessing  of  punishment.  That  idea— "the  wrong-doer 
deserves  punishment  because  he  might  have  acted  other- 
wise," in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is  nowadays  so  cheap, 
obvious,  natural,  and  inevitable,  and  that  it  has  had  to 
serve  as  an  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  the  senti- 
ment of  justice  appeared  on  earth,  is  in  point  of  fact  an 
exceedingly  late,  and  even  refined  form  of  human  judg- 
ment and  inference;  the  placing  of  this  idea  back  at  the 
beginning  of  the  world  is  simply  a  clumsy  violation  of 
the  principles  of  primitive  psychology.  Throughout  the* 
longest  period  of  human  history  punishment  was  never 
based  on  the  responsibility  of  the  evil-doer  for  his  action, 
and  was  consequently  not  based  on  the  hypothesis  that 
only  the  guilty  should  be  punished; — on  the  contrary, 
punishment  was  inflicted  in  those  days  for  the  same  reason 
that  parents  punish  their  children  even  nowadays,  out  of 
anger  at  an  injury  that  they  have  suffered,  an  anger 
which  vents  itself  mechanically  on  the  author  of  the 
injury — but  this  anger  is  kept  in  bounds  and  modified 
through  the  idea  that  every  injury  has  somewhere  or  other 
its  equivalent  price,  and  can  really  be  paid  off,  even 
though  it  be  by  means  of  pain  to  the  author.  Whence 
is  it  that  this  ancient  deep-rooted  and  now  perhaps  in- 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  49 

eradicable  idea  has  drawn  its  strength,  this  idea  of  an 
equivalency  between  injury  and  pain?  I  have  already 
revealed  its  origin,  in  the  contractual  relationship  between 
creditor  and  ower,  that  is  as  old  as  the  existence  of  legal 
rights  at  all,  and  in  its  turn  points  back  to  the  primary 
forms  of  purchase,  sale,  barter,  and  trade. 


The  realisation  of  these  contractual  relations  excites, 
of  course  (as  would  be  already  expected  from  our  previ- 
ous observations),  a  great  deal  of  suspicion  and  opposi- 
tion towards  the  primitive  society  which  made  or  sanc- 
tioned them.  In  this  society  promises  will  be  made;  in 
this  society  the  object  is  to  provide  the  promiser  with  a 
memory;  in  this  society,  so  may  we  suspect,  there  will 
be  full  scope  for  hardness,  cruelty,  and  pain:  the  "ower," 
in  order  to  induce  credit  in  his  promise  of  repayment,  in 
order  to  give  a  guarantee  of  the  earnestness  and  sanctity 
of  his  promise,  in  order  to  drill  into  his  own  conscience 
the  duty,  the  solemn  duty,  of  repayment,  will,  by  virtue 
of  a  contract  with  his  creditor  to  meet  the  contingency  of 
his  not  paying,  pledge  something  that  he  still  possesses, 
something  that  he  still  has  in  his  power,  for  instance,  his 
life  or  his  wife,  or  his  freedom  or  his  body  (or  under 
certain  religious  conditions  even  his  salvation,  his  soul's 
welfare,  even  his  peace  in  the  grave;  so  in  Egypt,  where 
the  corpse  of  the  ower  found  even  in  the  grave  no  rest 
from  the  creditor — of  course,  from  the  Egyptian  stand- 
point, this  peace  was  a  matter  of  particular  importance) . 
But  especially  has  the  creditor  the  power  of  inflicting  on 


50  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

the  body  of  the  ower  all  kinds  of  pain  and  torture — the 
power,  for  instance,  of  cutting  off  from  it  an  amount  that 
appeared  proportionate  to  the  greatness  of  the  debt; — 
this  point  of  view  resulted  in  the  universal  prevalence  at 
an  early  date  of  precise  schemes  of  valuation,  frequently 
horrible  in  the  minuteness  and  meticulosity  of  their  ap- 
plication, legally  sanctioned  schemes  of  valuation  for 
individual  limbs  and  parts  of  the  body.  I  consider  it  as 
already  a  progress,  as  a  proof  of  a  freer,  less  petty,  and 
more  Roman  conception  of  law,  when  the  Roman  Code  of 
the  Twelve  Tables  decreed  that  it  was  immaterial  how 
much  or  how  little  the  creditors  in  such  a  contingency 
cut  off,  "si  plus  minusve  secuerunt,  nc  Jraudc  esto."  Let 
us  make  the  logic  of  the  whole  of  this  equalisation  process 
clear;  it  is  strange  enough.  The  equivalence  consists  in 
this:  instead  of  an  advantage  directly  compensatory  of 
his  injury  (that  is,  instead  of  an  equalisation  in  money, 
lands,  or  some  kind  of  chattel),  the  creditor  is  granted 
by  way  of  repayment  and  compensation  a  certain  sensa- 
tion of  satisfaction — the  satisfaction  of  being  able  to  vent, 
without  any  trouble,  his  power  on  one  who  is  powerless, 
the  delight  "de  faire  le  mal  pour  le  plaisir  de  la  fairc," 
the  joy  in  sheer  violence:  and  this  joy  will  be  relished  in 
proportion  to  the  lowness  and  humbleness  of  the  creditor 
in  the  social  scale,  and  is  quite  apt  to  have  the  effect  of 
the  most  delicious  dainty,  and  even  seem  the  foretaste  of  a 
higher  social  position.  Thanks  to  the  punishment  of  the 
''ower,"  the  creditor  participates  in  the  rights  of  the  mas- 
ters. At  last  he  too,  for  once  in  a  way,  attains  the  edify- 
ing consciousness  of  being  able  to  despise  and  ill-treat 
a  creature — as  an  "inferior" — or  at  any  rate  of  seeing 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  51 

him  being  despised  and  ill-treated,  in  case  the  actual 
power  of  punishment,  the  administration  of  punishment, 
has  already  become  transferred  to  the  "authorities."  The 
compensation  consequently  consists  in  a  claim  on  cruelty 
and  a  right  to  draw  thereon. 


6. 


It  is  then  in  this  sphere  of  the  law  of  contract  that  we 
find  the  cradle  of  the  whole  moral  world  of  the  ideas  of 
"guilt,"  "conscience,"  "duty,"  the  "sacredness  of  duty," 
— their  commencement,  like  the  commencement  of  all 
great  things  in  the  world,  is  thoroughly  and  continuously 
saturated  with  blood.  And  should  we  not  add  that  this 
world  has  never  really  lost  a  certain  savour  of  blood  and 
torture  (not  even  in  old  Kant:  the  categorical  imperative 
reeks  of  cruelty).  It  was  in  this  sphere  likewise  that 
there  first  became  formed  that  sinister  and  perhaps  now 
indissoluble  association  of  the  ideas  of  "guilt"  and  "suf- 
fering." To  put  the  question  yet  again,  why  can  suffer- 
ing be  a  compensation  for  "owing"? — Because  the  inflic- 
tion of  suffering  produces  the  highest  degree  of  happi- 
ness, because  the  injured  party  will  get  in  exchange  for 
his  loss  (including  his  vexation  at  his  loss)  an  extraordi- 
nary counter-pleasure:  the  infliction  of  suffering — a  real 
feast,  something  that,  as  I  have  said,  was  all  the  more 
appreciated  the  greater  the  paradox  created  by  the  rank 
and  social  status  of  the  creditor.  These  observations  are 
purely  conjectural;  for,  apart  from  the  painful  nature 
of  the  task,  it  is  hard  to  plumb  such  profound  depths:  the 
clumsy  introduction  of  the  idea  of  "revenge"  as  a  con- 


52  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

necting-link  simply  hides  and  obscures  the  view  instead 
of  rendering  it  clearer  (revenge  itself  simply  leads  back 
again  to  the  identical  problem — "How  can  the  infliction 
of  suffering  be  a  satisfaction?').  In  my  opinion  it  is 
repugnant  to  the  delicacy,  and  still  more  to  the  hypocrisy 
of  tame  domestic  animals  (that  is,  modern  men;  that  is, 
ourselves),  to  realise  with  all  their  energy  the  extent  to 
which  cruelty  constituted  the  great  joy  and  delight  of 
ancient  man,  was  an  ingredient  which  seasoned  nearly  all 
his  pleasures,  and  conversely  the  extent  of  the  naivete 
and  innocence  with  which  he  manifested  his  need  for 
cruelty,  when  he  actually  made  as  a  matter  of  principle 
"disinterested  malice"  (or,  to  use  Spinoza's  expression, 
the  sym pat hia  malevolcns)  into  a  normal  characteristic  of 
man — as  consequently  something  to  which  the  conscience 
says  a  hearty  yes.  The  more  profound  observer  has  per- 
haps already  had  sufficient  opportunity  for  noticing  this 
most  ancient  and  radical  joy  and  delight  of  mankind;  in 
Beyond  Good  and  Evil,  Aph.  188  (and  even  earlier,  in 
The  Dawn  oj  Day,  Aphs.  18,  77,  113),  I  have  cautiously 
indicated  the  continually  growing  spiritualisation  and 
"deification"  of  cruelty,  which  pervades  the  whole  history 
of  the  higher  civilisation  (and  in  the  larger  sense  even 
constitutes  it).  At  any  rate  the  time  is  not  so  long  past 
when  it  was  impossible  to  conceive  of  royal  weddings  and 
national  festivals  on  a  grand  scale,  without  executions, 
tortures,  or  perhaps  an  auto-da-jc,  or  similarly  to  conceive 
of  an  aristocratic  household,  without  a  creature  to  serve 
a  butt  for  the  cruel  and  malicious  baiting  of  the  in- 
mates. (The  reader  will  perhaps  remember  Don  Quixote 
at  the  court  of  the  Duchess:  we  read  nowadavs  the  whole 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  53 

of  Don  Quixote  with  a  bitter  taste  in  the  mouth,  almost 
with  a  sensation  of  torture,  a  fact  which  would  appear 
very  strange  and  very  incomprehensible  to  the  author  and 
his  contemporaries — they  read  it  with  the  best  conscience 
in  the  world  as  the  gayest  of  books;  they  almost  died  with 
laughing  at  it.)  The  sight  of  suffering  does  one  good, 
the  infliction  of  suffering  does  one  more  good — this  is  a 
hard  maxim,  but  none  the  less  a  fundamental  maxim,  old, 
powerful,  and  "human,  all-too-human";  one,  moreover,  to 
which  perhaps  even  the  apes  as  well  would  subscribe: 
for  it  is  said  that  in  inventing  bizarre  cruelties  they  are 
giving  abundant  proof  of  their  future  humanity,  to  which, 
as  it  were,  they  are  playing  the  prelude.  Without  cruelty, 
no  feast:  so  teaches  the  oldest  and  longest  history  of 
man — and  in  punishment  too  is  there  so  much  of  the 
festive. 


Entertaining,  as  I  do,  these  thoughts,  I  am,  let  me  say 
in  parenthesis,  fundamentally  opposed  to  helping  our  pes- 
simists to  new  water  for  the  discordant  and  groaning  mills 
of  their  disgust  with  life;  on  the  contrary,  it  should  be 
shown  specifically  that,  at  the  time  when  mankind  was 
not  yet  ashamed  of  its  cruelty,  life  in  the  world  was 
brighter  than  it  is  nowadays  when  there  are  pessimists. 
The  darkening  of  the  heavens  over  man  has  always  in- 
creased in  proportion  to  the  growth  of  man's  shame  be- 
fore man.  The  tired  pessimistic  outlook,  the  mistrust  of 
the  riddle  of  life,  the  icy  negation  of  disgusted  ennui,  all 
those  are  not  the  signs  of  the  most  evil  age  of  the  human 


54  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

race:  much  rather  do  they  come  first  to  the  light  of  day, 
as  the  swamp-flowers,  which  they  are,  when  the  swamp 
to  which  they  belong,  comes  into  existence — I  mean  the 
diseased  refinement  and  moralisation,  thanks  to  which 
the  "animal  man"  has  at  last  learnt  to  be  ashamed  of  all 
his  instincts.  On  the  road  to  angel-hood  (not  to  use  in 
this  context  a  harder  word)  man  has  developed  that  dys- 
peptic stomach  and  coated  tongue,  which  have  made  not 
only  the  joy  and  innocence  of  the  animal  repulsive  to 
him,  but  also  life  itself: — so  that  sometimes  he  stands 
with  stopped  nostrils  before  his  own  self,  and,  like  Pope 
Innocent  the  Third,  makes  a  black  list  of  his  own  horrors 
("unclean  generation,  loathsome  nutrition  when  in  the 
maternal  body,  badness  of  the  matter  out  of  which  man 
develops,  awful  stench,  secretion  of  saliva,  urine,  and  ex- 
crement"). Nowadays,  when  suffering  is  always  trotted 
out  as  the  first  argument  against  existence,  as  its  most  sin- 
ister query,  it  is  well  to  remember  the  times  when  men 
judged  on  converse  principles  because  they  could  not  dis- 
pense with  the  infliction  of  suffering,  and  saw  therein  a 
magic  of  the  first  order,  a  veritable  bait  of  seduction  to 
life. 

Perhaps  in  those  days  (this  is  to  solace  the  weaklings) 
pain  did  not  hurt  so  much  as  it  does  nowadays:  any 
physician  who  has  treated  negroes  (granted  that  these  are 
taken  as  representative  of  the  prehistoric  man)  suffering 
from  severe  internal  inflammations  which  would  bring  a 
European,  even  though  he  had  the  soundest  constitution, 
almost  to  despair,  would  be  in  a  position  to  come  to  this 
conclusion.  Pain  has  not  the  same  effect  with  negroes. 
(The  curve  of  human  sensibilities  to  pain  seems  indeed  to 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  55 

sink  in  an  extraordinary  and  almost  sudden  fashion,  as 
soon  as  one  has  passed  the  upper  ten  thousand  or  ten 
millions  of  over-civilised  humanity,  and  I  personally  have 
no  doubt  that,  by  comparison  with  one  painful  night 
passed  by  one  single  hysterical  chit  of  a  cultured  woman, 
the  suffering  of  all  the  animals  taken  together  who  have 
been  put  to  the  question  of  the  knife,  so  as  to  give  scien- 
tific answers,  are  simply  negligible.)  We  may  perhaps  be 
allowed  to  admit  the  possibility  of  the  craving  for  cruelty 
not  necessarily  having  become  really  extinct:  it  only  re- 
quires, in  view  of  the  fact  that  pain  hurts  more  nowadays, 
a  certain  sublimation  and  subtilisation,  it  must  especially 
be  translated  to  the  imaginative  and  psychic  plane,  and  be 
adorned  with  such  smug  euphemisms,  that  even  the  most 
fastidious  and  hypocritical  conscience  could  never  grow 
suspicious  of  their  real  nature  ("Tragic  pity"  is  one  of 
these  euphemisms:  another  is  "les  nostalgies  de  la  croix"). 
What  really  raises  one's  indignation  against  suffering  is 
not  suffering  intrinsically,  but  the  senselessness  of  suffer- 
ing; such  a  senselessness,  however,  existed  neither  in 
Christianity,  which  interpreted  suffering  into  a  whole  mys- 
terious salvation-apparatus,  nor  in  the  beliefs  of  the  naive 
ancient  man,  who  only  knew  how  to  find  a  meaning  in 
suffering  from  the  standpoint  of  the  spectator,  or  the  in- 
flictor  of  the  suffering.  In  order  to  get  the  secret,  undis- 
covered, and  unwitnessed  suffering  out  of  the  world  it  was 
almost  compulsory  to  invent  gods  and  a  hierarchy  of  in- 
termediate beings,  in  short,  something  which  wanders  even 
among  secret  places,  sees  even  in  the  dark,  and  makes  a 
point  of  never  missing  an  interesting  and  painful  spectacle. 
It  was  with  the  help  of  such  inventions  that  life  got  to 


56  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

learn  the  tour  de  force,  which  has  become  part  of  its 
stock-in-trade,  the  tour  de  jorce  of  self-justification,  of 
the  justification  of  evil;  nowadays  this  would  perhaps  re- 
quire other  auxiliary  devices  (for  instance,  life  as  a  riddle, 
life  as  a  problem  of  knowledge).  "Every  evil  is  justified 
in  the  sight  of  which  a  god  finds  edification,"  so  rang  the 
logic  of  primitive  sentiment — and,  indeed,  was  it  only  of 
primitive?  The  gods  conceived  as  friends  of  spectacles  of 
cruelty — oh,  how  far  does  this  primeval  conception  ex- 
tend even  nowadays  into  our  European  civilisation!  One 
would  perhaps  like  in  this  context  to  consult  Luther  and 
Calvin.  It  is  at  any  rate  certain  that  even  the  Greeks 
knew  no  more  piquant  seasoning  for  the  happiness  of 
their  gods  than  the  joys  of  cruelty.  What,  do  you  think, 
was  the  mood  with  which  Homer  makes  his  gods  look  down 
upon  the  fates  of  men?  What  final  meaning  have  at 
bottom  the  Trojan  War  and  similar  tragic  horrors?  It 
is  impossible  to  entertain  any  doubt  on  the  point:  they 
were  intended  as  festival  games  for  the  gods,  and,  in  so  far 
as  the  poet  is  of  a  more  godlike  breed  than  other  men.  as 
festival  games  also  for  the  poets.  It  was  in  just  this  spirit 
and  no  other,  that  at  a  later  date  the  moral  philosophers 
of  Greece  conceived  the  eyes  of  God  as  still  looking  down 
on  the  moral  struggle,  the  heroism,  and  the  self-torture  of 
the  virtuous;  the  Heracles  of  duty  was  on  a  stage,  and 
was  conscious  of  the  fact;  virtue  without  witnesses  was 
something  quite  unthinkable  for  this  nation  of  actors. 
Must  not  that  philosophic  invention,  so  audacious  and  so 
fatal,  which  was  then  absolutely  new  to  Europe,  the  in- 
vention of  "free  will,"  of  the  absolute  spontaneity  of  man 
in  good  and  evil,  simply  have  been  made  for  the  specific 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  57 

purpose  of  justifying  the  idea,  that  the  interest  of  the 
gods  in  humanity  and  human  virtue  was  inexhaustible? 
There  would  never  on  the  stage  of  this  free-will  world 
be  a  dearth  of  really  new,  really  novel  and  exciting  situ- 
ations, plots,  catastrophes.  A  world  thought  out  on  com- 
pletely deterministic  lines  would  be  easily  guessed  by  the 
gods,  and  would  consequently  soon  bore  them — sufficient 
reason  for  these  friends  of  the  gods,  the  philosophers,  not 
to  ascribe  to  their  gods  such  a  deterministic  world.  The 
whole  of  ancient  humanity  is  full  of  delicate  consideration 
for  the  spectator,  being  as  it  is  a  world  of  thorough  pub- 
licity and  theatricality,  which  could  not  conceive  of  happi- 
ness without  spectacles  and  festivals. — And,  as  has  already 
been  said,  even  in  great  punishment  there  is  so  much 
which  is  festive. 

8. 

The  feeling  of  "ought,"  of  personal  obligation  (to  take 
up  again  the  train  of  our  inquiry),  has  had,  as  we  saw,  its 
origin  in  the  oldest  and  most  original  personal  relationship 
that  there  is,  the  relationship  between  buyer  and  seller, 
creditor  and  owner:  here  it  was  that  individual  confronted 
individual,  and  that  individual  matched  himself  against 
individual.  There  has  not  yet  been  found  a  grade  of 
civilisation  so  low,  as  not  to  manifest  some  trace  of  this 
relationship.  Making  prices,  assessing  values,  thinking 
out  equivalents,  exchanging— all  this  preoccupied  the 
primal  thoughts  of  man  to  such  an  extent  that  in  a  certain 
sense  it  constituted  thinking  itself:  it  was  here  that  was 
trained  the  oldest  form  of  sagacity,  it  was  here  m  this 


58  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

sphere  that  we  can  perhaps  trace  the  first  commencement 
of  man's  pride,  of  his  feeling  of  superiority  over  other  ani- 
mals.    Perhaps  our  word  "Mensch"    (manas)    still  ex- 
presses just  something  of  this  self-pride:    man  denoted 
himself  as  the  being  who  measures  values,  who  values  and 
measures,  as  the  "assessing"  animal  par  excellence.    Sale 
and  purchase,  together  with  their  psychological  concomi- 
tants, are  older  than  the  origins  of  any  form  of  social  or- 
ganisation and  union:   it  is  rather  from  the  most  rudi- 
mentary form  of  individual  right  that  the  budding  con- 
sciousness of  exchange,  commerce,  debt,  right,  obligation, 
compensation  was  first  transferred  to  the  rudest  and  most 
elementary  of  the  social  complexes  (in  their  relation  to 
similar  complexes),   the  habit  of  comparing  force  with 
force,  together  with  that  of  measuring,  of  calculating.    His 
eye  was  now  focussed  to  this  perspective;  and  with  that 
ponderous  consistency  characteristic  of  ancient  thought, 
which,  though  set  in  motion  with  difficulty,  yet  proceeds 
inflexibly  along  the  line  on  which  it  has  started,  man  soon 
arrived  at  the  great  generalisation,  "everything  has  its 
price,  all  can  be  paid  for,"  the  oldest  and  most  naive  moral 
canon  of  justice,  the  beginning  of  all  "kindness,"  of  all 
"equity,"  of  all  "goodwill,"  of  all  "objectivity"  in  the 
world.    Justice  in  this  initial  phase  is  the  goodwill  among 
people  of  about  equal  power  to  come  to  terms  with  each 
other,  to  come  to  an  understanding  again  by  means  of  a 
settlement,  and  with  regard  to  the  less  powerful,  to  com- 
pel them  to  agree  among  themselves  to  a  settlement. 


Measured  always  by  the  standard  of  antiquity    (this 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  59 

antiquity,  moreover,  is  present  or  again  possible  at  all 
periods) ,  the  community  stands  to  its  members  in  that  im- 
portant and  radical  relationship  of  creditor  to  his  ew- 
ers." Man  lives  in  a  community,  man  enjoys  the  advan- 
tages of  a  community  (and  what  advantages!  we  occasion- 
ally underestimate  them  nowadays),  man  lives  protected, 
spared,  in  peace  and  trust,  secure  from  certain  injuries 
and  enmities,  to  which  the  man  outside  the  community, 
the  "peaceless"  man,  is  exposed, — a  German  understands 
the  original  meaning  of  "Elend"  {elend), — secure  because 
he  has  entered  into  pledges  and  obligations  to  the  com- 
munity in  respect  of  these  very  injuries  and  enmities. 
What  happens  when  this  is  not  the  case?  The  commun- 
ity, the  defrauded  creditor,  will  get  itself  paid,  as  well  as 
it  can,  one  can  reckon  on  that.  In  this  case  the  question 
of  the  direct  damage  done  by  the  offender  is  quite  sub- 
sidiary: quite  apart  from  this  the  criminal*  is  above  all  a 
breaker,  a  breaker  of  word  and  covenant  to  the  whole,  as 
regards  all  the  advantages  and  amenities  of  the  communal 
life  in  which  up  to  that  time  he  had  participated.  The 
criminal  is  an  "ower"  who  not  only  fails  to  repay  the  ad- 
vances and  advantages  that  have  been  given  to  him,  but 
even  sets  out  to  attack  his  creditor:  consequently  he  is  in 
the  future  not  only,  as  is  fair,  deprived  of  all  these  ad- 
vantages and  amenities — he  is  in  addition  reminded  of 
the  importance  of  those  advantages.  The  wrath  of  the 
injured  creditor,  of  the  community,  puts  him  back  in  the 
wild  and  outlawed  status  from  which  he  was  previously 
protected:  the  community  repudiates  him — and  now  every 
kind  of  enmity  can  vent  itself  on  him.    Punishment  is  in. 


*  German:  "Verbrecher."— H.  B.  S. 


60  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

this  stage  of  civilisation  simply  the  copy,  the  mimic,  of 
the  normal  treatment  of  the  hated,  disdained,  and  con- 
quered enemy,  who  is  not  only  deprived  of  every  right 
and  protection  but  of  every  mercy;  so  we  have  the  mar- 
tial law  and  triumphant  festival  of  the  vce  victisf  in  all  its 
mercilessness  and  cruelty.  This  shows  why  war  itself 
(counting  the  sacrificial  cult  of  war)  has  produced  all  the 
forms  under  which  punishment  has  manifested  itself  in 
history. 


10. 


As  it  grows  more  powerful,  the  community  tends  to  take 
the  offences  of  the  individual  less  seriously,  because  they 
are  now  regarded  as  being  much  less  revolutionary  and 
dangerous  to  the  corporate  existence:  the  evil-doer  is  no 
more  outlawed  and  put  outside  the  pale,  the  common 
wrath  can  no  longer  vent  itself  upon  him  with  its  old 
licence, — on  the  contrary,  from  this  very  time  it  is  against 
this  wrath,  and  particularly  against  the  wrath  of  those 
directly  injured,  that  the  evil-doer  is  carefully  shielded  and 
protected  by  the  community.  As,  in  fact,  the  penal  law 
develops,  the  following  characteristics  become  more  and 
more  clearly  marked:  compromise  with  the  wrath  of  those 
directly  affected  by  the  misdeed;  a  consequent  endeavour 
to  localise  the  matter  and  to  prevent  a  further,  or  indeed 
a  general  spread  of  the  disturbance;  attempts  to  find 
equivalents  and  to  settle  the  whole  matter  (compositio); 
above  all,  the  will,  which  manifests  itself  with  increasing 
definiteness,  to  treat  every  offence  as  in  a  certain  degree 
capable  of  being  paid  off,  and  consequently,  at  any  rate 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  61 

up  to  a  certain  point,  to  isolate  the  offender  from  his  act. 
As  the  power  and  the  self-consciousness  of  a  community 
increases,  so  proportionately  does  the  penal  law  become 
mitigated;  conversely  every  weakening  and  jeopardising 
of  the  community  revives  the  harshest  forms  of  that  law. 
The  creditor  has  always  grown  more  humane  proportion- 
ately as  he  has  grown  more  rich;  finally  the  amount  of 
injury  he  can  endure  without  really  suffering  becomes  the 
criterion  of  his  wealth.  It  is  possible  to  conceive  of  a 
society  blessed  with  so  great  a  consciousness  of  its  own 
power  as  to  indulge  in  the  most  aristocratic  luxury  of 
letting  its  wrong-doers  go  scot-jree. — "What  do  my  para- 
sites matter  to  me?"  might  society  say.  "Let  them  live 
and  flourish!  I  am  strong  enough  for  it." — The  justice 
which  began  with  the  maxim,  "Everything  can  be  paid 
off,  everything  must  be  paid  off,"  ends  with  connivance 
at  the  escape  of  those  who  cannot  pay  to  escape — it  ends, 
like  every  good  thing  on  earth,  by  destroying  itself. — 
The  self-destruction  of  Justice!  we  know  the  pretty  name 
it  calls  itself — Grace!  it  remains,  as  is  obvious,  the  privi- 
lege of  the  strongest,  better  still,  their  super-law. 


n. 


A  deprecatory  word  here  against  the  attempts,  that 
have  lately  been  made,  to  find  the  origin  of  justice  on 
quite  another  basis — namely,  on  that  of  resentment.  Let 
me  whisper  a  word  in  the  ear  of  the  psychologists,  if  they 
would  fain  study  revenge  itself  at  close  quarters:  this 
plant  blooms  its  prettiest  at  present  among  Anarchists 
and  anti-Semites,  a  hidden  flower,  as  it  has  ever  been,  like 


62  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

the  violet,  though,  forsooth,  with  another  perfume.  And 
as  like  must  necessarily  emanate  from  like,  it  will  not  be 
a  matter  for  surprise  that  it  is  just  in  such  circles  that  we 
see  the  birth  of  endeavours  (it  is  their  old  birthplace — 
compare  above,  First  Essay,  paragraph  14),  to  sanctify 
revenge  under  the  name  of  justice  (as  though  Justice  were 
at  bottom  merely  a  development  of  the  consciousness  of 
injury),  and  thus  with  the  rehabilitation  of  revenge  to 
reinstate  generally  and  collectively  all  the  reactive  emo- 
tions. I  object  to  this  last  point  least  of  all.  It  even 
seems  meritorious  when  regarded  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  whole  problem  of  biology  (from  which  standpoint 
the  value  of  these  emotions  has  up  to  the  present  been 
underestimated).  And  that  to  which  I  alone  call  atten- 
tion, is  the  circumstance  that  it  is  the  spirit  of  revenge 
itself,  from  which  develops  this  new  nuance  of  scientific 
equity  (for  the  benefit  of  hate,  envy,  mistrust,  jealousy, 
suspicion,  rancour,  revenge).  This  scientific  "equity" 
stops  immediately  and  makes  way  for  the  accents  of 
deadly  enmity  and  prejudice,  so  soon  as  another  group 
of  emotions  comes  on  the  scene,  which  in  my  opinion  are 
of  a  much  higher  biological  value  than  these  reactions, 
and  consequently  have  a  paramount  claim  to  the  valua- 
tion and  appreciation  of  science:  I  mean  the  really  active 
emotions,  such  as  personal  and  material  ambition,  and 
so  forth.  (E.  Diihring,  Value  of  Life;  Course  of  Pliiloso- 
pliy,  and  passim.)  So  much  against  this  tendency  in 
general:  but  as  for  the  particular  maxim  of  Duhring's, 
that  the  home  of  Justice  is  to  be  found  in  the  sphere  of 
the  reactive  feelings,  our  love  of  truth  compels  us  dras- 
tically to  invert  his  own  proposition  and  to  oppose  to  him 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  63 

this  other  maxim:  the  last  sphere  conquered  by  the  spirit 
of  justice  is  the  sphere  of  the  feeling  of  reaction!     When 
it  really  comes  about  that  the  just  man  remains  just  even 
as  regards  his  injurer  (and  not  merely  cold,  moderate,  re- 
served, indifferent:  being  just  is  always  a  positive  state) ; 
when,  in  spite  of  the  strong  provocation  of  personal  insult, 
contempt,  and  calumny,  the  lofty  and  clear  objectivity  of 
the  just  and  judging  eye  (whose  glance  is  as  profound  as 
it  is  gentle)  is  untroubled,  why  then  we  have  a  piece  of 
perfection,   a  past  master  of  the  world — something,  in 
fact,  which  it  would  not  be  wise  to  expect,  and  which 
should  not  at  any  rate  be  too  easily  believed.     Speaking 
generally,  there  is  no  doubt  but  that  even  the  justest  in- 
dividual only  requires  a  little  dose  of  hostility,  malice,  or 
innuendo  to  drive  the  blood  into  his  brain  and  the  fairness 
from  it.    The  active  man,  the  attacking,  aggressive  man 
is  always  a  hundred  degrees  nearer  to  justice  than  the  man 
who  merely  reacts;  he  certainly  has  no  need  to  adopt  the 
tactics,  necessary  in  the  case  of  the  reacting  man,  of  mak- 
ing false  and  biassed  valuations  of  his  object.     It  is,  in 
point  of  fact,  for  this  reason  that  the  aggressive  man  has 
at  all  times  enjoyed  the  stronger,  bolder,  more  aristocratic, 
and  also  jreer  outlook,  the  better  conscience.    On  the  other 
hand,  we  already  surmise  who  it  really  is  that  has  on  his 
conscience  the  invention  of  the  "bad  conscience," — the 
resentful  man !    Finally,  let  man  look  at  himself  in  history. 
In  what  sphere  up  to  the  present  has  the  whole  adminis- 
tration of  law,  the  acutal  need  of  law,  found  its  earthly 
home?    Perchance  in  the  sphere  of  the  reacting  man?    Not 
for  a  minute:  rather  in  that  of  the  active,  strong,  spon- 
taneous, aggressive  man?    I  deliberately  defy  the  above- 


64  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

mentioned  agitator  (who  himself  makes  this  self-confes- 
sion, "the  creed  of  revenge  has  run  through  all  my  works 
and  endeavours  like  the  red  thread  of  Justice"),  and  say, 
that  judged  historically  law  in  the  world  represents  the 
very  war  against  the  reactive  feelings,  the  very  war  waged 
on  those  feelings  by  the  powers  of  activity  and  aggri 
sion,  which  devote  some  of  their  strength  to  damming  and 
keeping  within  bounds  this  effervescence  of  hysterical  re- 
activity, and  to  forcing  it  to  some  compromise.  Every- 
where where  justice  is  practised  and  justice  is  maintained, 
it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  stronger  power,  when  con- 
fronted with  the  weaker  powers  which  are  inferior  to  it 
(whether  they  be  groups,  or  individuals),  searches  for 
weapons  to  put  an  end  to  the  senseless  fury  of  resent- 
ment, while  it  carries  on  its  object,  partly  by  taking  the 
victim  of  resentment  out  of  the  clutches  of  revenge,  partly 
by  substituting  for  revenge  a  campaign  of  its  own  against 
the  enemies  of  peace  and  order,  partly  by  finding,  sug- 
gesting, and  occasionally  enforcing  settlements,  partly  by 
standardising  certain  equivalents  for  injuries,  to  which 
equivalents  the  element  of  resentment  is  henceforth  finally 
referred.  The  most  drastic  measure,  however,  taken  and 
effectuated  by  the  supreme  power,  to  combat  the  pre- 
ponderance of  the  feelings  of  spite  and  vindictiveness — 
it  takes  this  measure  as  soon  as  it  is  at  all  strong  enough 
to  do  so — is  the  foundation  of  law,  the  imperative  decla- 
ration of  what  in  its  eyes  is  to  be  regarded  as  just  and 
lawful,  and  what  unjust  and  unlawful:  and  while,  after 
the  foundation  of  law,  the  supreme  power  treats  the  ag- 
gressive and  arbitrary  acts  of  individuals,  or  of  whole 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  65 

groups,  as  a  violation  of  law,  and  a  revolt  against  itself, 
it  distracts  the  feelings  of  its  subjects  from  the  immediate 
injury  inflicted  by  such  a  violation,  and  thus  eventually 
attains  the  very  opposite  result  to  that  always  desired  by 
revenge,  which  sees  and  recognises  nothing  but  the  stand- 
point of  the  injured  party.  From  henceforth  the  eye  be- 
comes trained  to  a  more  and  more  impersonal  valuation 
of  the  deed,  even  the  eye  of  the  injured  party  himself 
(though  this  is  in  the  final  stage  of  all,  as  has  been  pre- 
viously remarked) — on  this  principle  "right"  and  "wrong" 
first  manifest  themselves  after  the  foundation  of  law  (and 
not,  as  Duhring  maintains,  only  after  the  act  of  violation). 
To  talk  of  intrinsic  right  and  intrinsic  wrong  is  absolutely 
nonsensical;  intrinsically,  an  injury,  an  oppression,  an 
exploitation,  an  annihilation  can  be  nothing  wrong,  inas- 
much as  life  is  essentially  (that  is,  in  its  cardinal  func- 
tions) something  which  functions  by  injuring,  oppressing, 
exploiting,  and  annihilating,  and  is  absolutely  inconceiv- 
able without  such  a  character.  It  is  necessary  to  make 
an  even  more  serious  confession: — viewed  from  the  most 
advanced  biological  standpoint,  conditions  of  legality  can 
be  only  exceptional  conditions,  in  that  they  are  partial 
restrictions  of  the  real  life-will,  which  makes  for  power, 
and  in  that  they  are  subordinated  to  the  life-will's  general 
end  as  particular  means,  that  is,  as  means  to  create  larger 
units  of  strength.  A  legal  organisation,  conceived  of  as 
sovereign  and  universal,  not  as  a  weapon  in  a  fight  of 
complexes  of  power,  but  as  a  weapon  against  fighting, 
generally  something  after  the  style  of  Diihring's  com- 
munistic model  of  treating  every  will  as  equal  with  every 


66  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

other  will,  would  be  a  principle  hostile  to  life,  a  destroyer 
and  dissolver  of  man,  an  outrage  on  the  future  of  man,  a 
symptom  of  fatigue,  a  secret  cut  to  Nothingness. — 


12. 


A  word  more  on  the  origin  and  end  of  punishment — 
two  problems  which  are  or  ought  to  be  kept  distinct,  but 
which  unfortunately  are  usually  lumped  into  one.  And 
what  tactics  have  our  moral  genealogists  employed  up  to 
the  present  in  these  cases?  Their  inveterate  naivete. 
They  find  out  some  "end"  in  the  punishment,  for  instance, 
revenge  and  deterrence,  and  then  in  all  their  innocence 
set  this  end  at  the  beginning,  as  the  causa  fiendi  of  the 
punishment,  and — they  have  done  the  trick.  But  the 
patching  up  of  a  history  of  the  origin  of  law  is  the  last 
use  to  which  the  "End  in  Law"*  ought  to  be  put.  Per- 
haps there  is  no  more  pregnant  principle  for  any  kind  of 
history  than  the  following,  which,  difficult  though  it  is  to 
master,  should  none  the  less  be  mastered  in  every  detail. — 
The  origin  of  the  existence  of  a  thing  and  its  final  utility, 
its  practical  application  and  incorporation  in  a  system  of 
ends,  are  toto  ado  opposed  to  each  other — everything, 
anything,  which  exists  and  which  prevails  anywhere,  will 
always  be  put  to  new  purposes  by  a  force  superior  to  it- 
self, will  be  commandeered  afresh,  will  be  turned  and 
transformed  to  new  uses;  all  "happening"  in  the  organic 
world  consists  of  overpowering  and  dominating,  and  again 
all  overpowering  and  domination  is  a  new  interpretation 
and  adjustment,  which  must  necessarily  obscure  or  ab- 
solutely extinguish  the  subsisting  "meaning"  and  "end." 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  67 

The  most  perfect  comprehension  of  the  utility  of  any- 
physiological  organ  (or  also  of  a  legal  institution,  social 
custom,  political  habit,  form  in  art  or  in  religious  wor- 
ship) does  not  for  a  minute  imply  any  simultaneous  com- 
prehension of  its  origin:  this  may  seem  uncomfortable 
and  unpalatable  to  the  older  men, — for  it  has  been  the 
immemorial  belief  that  understanding  the  final  cause  or 
the  utility  of  a  thing,  a  form,  an  institution,  means  also 
understanding  the  reason  for  its  origin:  to  give  an  ex- 
ample of  this  logic,  the  eye  was  made  to  see,  the  hand 
was  made  to  grasp.  So  even  punishment  was  conceived 
as  invented  with  a  view  to  punishing.  But  all  ends  and 
all  utilities  are  only  signs  that  a  Will  to  Power  has  mas- 
tered a  less  powerful  force,  has  impressed  thereon  out  of 
its  own  self  the  meaning  of  a  function;  and  the  whole 
history  of  a  "Thing,"  an  organ,  a  custom,  can  on  the 
same  principle  be  regarded  as  a  continuous  "sign-chain" 
of  perpetually  new  interpretations  and  adjustments,  whose 
causes,  so  far  from  needing  to  have  even  a  mutual  con- 
nection, sometimes  follow  and  alternate  with  each  other 
absolutely  haphazard.  Similarly,  the  evolution  of  a 
"Thing,"  of  a  custom,  is  anything  but  its  progressus  to 
an  end,  still  less  a  logical  and  direct  progressus  attained 
with  the  minimum  expenditure  of  energy  and  cost:  it  is 
rather  the  succession  of  processes  of  subjugation,  more  or 
less  profound,  more  or  less  mutually  independent,  which 
operate  on  the  thing  itself;  it  is,  further,  the  resistance 
which  in  each  case  invariably  displayed  this  subjugation, 
the  Protean  wriggles  by  way  of  defence  and  reaction,  and, 


*  An  allusion  to  Der  Zweck  im  Recht,  by  the  great  German 
jurist,  Professor  Ihering. 


6S  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

further,   the  results  of  successful   counter-efforts.     The 
form  is  fluid,  but  the  meaning  is  even  more  so — even  in- 
side every  individual  organism  the  case  is  the  same:  with 
every  genuine  growth  of  the  whole,  the  "function"  of  the 
individual   organs  becomes  shifted, — in   certain   cases   a 
partial  perishing  of  these  organs,  a  diminution  of  their 
numbers  (for  instance,  through  annihilation  of  the  con- 
necting members),  can  be  a  symptom  of  growing  strength 
and  perfection.     What  I  mean  is  this:  even  partial  loss 
of  utility,  decay,  and  degeneration,  loss  of  function  and 
purpose,  in  a  word,  death,  appertain  to  the  conditions  of 
the  genuine  progressus;  which  always  appears  in  the  shape 
of  a  will  and  way  to  greater  power,  and  is  always  realised 
at  the  expense  of  innumerable  smaller  powers.    The  mag- 
nitude of  a  "progress"  is  gauged  by  the  greatness  of  the 
sacrifice  that  it  requires:  humanity  as  a  mass  sacrificed  to 
the  prosperity  of  the  one  stronger  species  of  Man — that 
would  be  a.  progress.    I  emphasise  all  the  more  this  cardi- 
nal characteristic  of  the  historic  method,  for  the  reason 
that  in  its  essence  it  runs  counter  to  predominant  instincts 
and  prevailing  taste,  which  must  prefer  to  put  up  with 
absolute  casualness,  even  with  the  mechanical  senseless- 
ness of  ail  phenomena,  than  with  the  theory  of  a  power- 
will,  in  exhaustive  play  throughout  all  phenomena.     The 
democratic   idiosyncrasy   against  everything   which   rules 
and  wishes  to  rule,  the  modern  misarchism  (to  coin  a  bad 
word  for  a  bad  thing),  has  gradually  but  so  thoroughly 
transformed  itself  into  the  guise  of  intellectualism,  the 
most  abstract  intellectualism,  that  even  nowadays  it  pene- 
trates and  has  the  right  to  penetrate  step  by  step  into  the 
most  exact  and  apparently  the  most  objective  sciences:  this 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  69 

tendency  has,  in  fact,  in  my  view  already  dominated  the 
whole  of  physiology  and  biology,  and  to  their  detriment, 
as  is  obvious,  in  so  far  as  it  has  spirited  away  a  radical 
idea,  the  idea  of  true  activity.  The  tyranny  of  this  idio- 
syncrasy, however,  results  in  the  theory  of  "adaptation" 
being  pushed  forward  into  the  van  of  the  argument,  ex- 
ploited; adaptation — that  means  to  say,  a  second-class 
activity,  a  mere  capacity  for  "reacting";  in  fact,  life  itself 
has  been  defined  (by  Herbert  Spencer)  as  an  increasingly 
effective  internal  adaptation  to  external  circumstances. 
This  definition,  however,  fails  to  realise  the  real  essence 
of  life,  its  will  to  power.  It  fails  to  appreciate  the  para- 
mount superiority  enjoyed  by  those  plastic  forces  of  spon- 
taneity, aggression,  and  encroachment  with  their  new  in- 
terpretations and  tendencies,  to  the  operation  of  which 
adaptation  is  only  a  natural  corollary:  consequently  the 
sovereign  office  of  the  highest  functionaries  in  the  organ- 
ism itself  (among  which  the  life-will  appears  as  an  active 
and  formative  principle)  is  repudiated.  One  remembers 
Huxley's  reproach  to  Spencer  of  his  "administrative  Ni- 
hilism": but  it  is  a  case  of  something  much  more  than 
"administration." 


13. 


To  return  to  our  subject,  namely  punishment,  we  must 
make  consequently  a  double  distinction:  first,  the  rela- 
tively permanent  element,  the  custom,  the  act,  the 
"drama,"  a  certain  rigid  sequence  of  methods  of  pro- 
cedure; on  the  other  hand,  the  fluid  element,  the  mean- 
ing, the  end,  the  expectation  which  is  attached  to  the  oper- 


70  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

ation  of  such  procedure.     At  this  point  we  immediately 
assume,  per  analogiam  (in  accordance  with  the  theory  of 
the  historic  method,  which  we  have  elaborated  above), 
that  the  procedure  itself  is  something  older  and  earlier 
than  its  utilisation  in  punishment,  that  this  utilisation  was 
introduced  and  interpreted  into  the  procedure  (which  had 
existed  for  a  long  time,  but  whose  employment  had  another 
meaning),  in  short,  that  the  case  is  different  from  that 
hftherto  supposed  by  our  naif  genealogists  of  morals  and 
of  law,  who  thought  that  the  procedure  was  invented  for 
the  purpose  of  punishment,  in  the  same  way  that  the 
hand  had  been  previously  thought  to  have  been  invented 
for  the  purpose  of  grasping.     With  regard  to  the  other 
element  in  punishment,  its  fluid  element,  its  meaning,  the 
idea  of  punishment  in  a  very  Jate  stage  of  civilisation  (for 
instance,  contemporary  Europe)  is  not  content  with  man- 
ifesting merely  one  meaning,  but  manifests  a  whole  syn- 
thesis "of  meanings."    The  past  general  history  of  pun- 
ishment, the  history  of  its  employment  for  the  most  diverse 
ends,  crystallises  eventually  into  a  kind  of  unity,  which  is 
difficult  to  analyse  into  its  parts,  and  which,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  emphasise,   absolutely  defies   definition.      (It   is 
nowadays  impossible  to  say  definitely  the  precise  reason 
fur  punishment:   all  ideas,  in  which  a  whole  process  is 
promiscuously  comprehended,  elude  definition;  it  is  only 
that  which  has  no  history,  which  can  be  defined.)     At 
an  earlier  stage,  on  the  contrary,  that  synthesis  of  mean- 
ings appears  much  less  rigid  and  much  more  elastic;  we 
can  realise  how  in  each  individual  case  the  elements  of 
the  synthesis  change  their  value  and   their  position,  so 
that  now  one  element  and  now  another  stands  nut  and  pre- 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  71 

dominates  over  the  others,  nay,  in  certain  cases  one  ele- 
ment (perhaps  the  end  of  deterrence)  seems  to  eliminate 
all  the  rest.  At  any  rate,  so  as  to  give  some  idea  of  the 
uncertain,  supplementary,  and  accidental  nature  of  the 
meaning  of  punishment  and  of  the  manner  in  which  one 
identical  procedure  can  be  employed  and  adapted  for  the 
most  diametrically  opposed  objects,  I  will  at  this  point 
give  a  scheme  that  has  suggested  itself  to  me,  a  scheme  it- 
self based  on  comparatively  small  and  accidental  ma- 
terial.— Punishment,  as  rendering  the  criminal  harmless 
and  incapable  of  further  injury. — Punishment,  as  com- 
pensation for  the  injury  sustained  by  the  injured  party, 
in  any  form  whatsoever  (including  the  form  of  senti- 
mental compensation). — Punishment,  as  an  isolation  of 
that  which  disturbs  the  equilibrium,  so  as  to  prevent  the 
further  spreading  of  the  disturbance. — Punishment  as  a 
means  of  inspiring  fear  of  those  who  determine  and  exe- 
cute the  punishment. — Punishment  as  a  kind  of  compen- 
sation for  advantages  which  the  wrong-doer  has  up  to  that 
time  enjoyed  (for  example,  when  he  is  utilised  as  a  slave 
in  the  mines) . — Punishment,  as  the  elimination  of  an  ele- 
ment of  decay  (sometimes  of  a  whole  branch,  as  accord- 
ing to  the  Chinese  laws,  consequently  as  a  means  to  the 
purification  of  the  race,  or  the  preservation  of  a  social 
type). — Punishment  as  a  festival,  as  the  violent  oppres- 
sion and  humiliation  of  an  enemy  that  has  at  last  been 
subdued. — Punishment  as  a  mnemonic,  whether  for  him 
who  suffers  the  punishment — the  so-called  "correction," 
or  for  the  witnesses  of  its  administration. — Punishment,  as 
the  payment  of  a  fee  stipulated  for  by  the  power  which 
protects  the  evil-doer  from  the  excesses  of  revenge. — 


72  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

Punishment,  as  a  compromise  with  the  natural  phenom- 
enon of  revenge,  in  so  far  as  revenge  is  still  maintained 
and  claimed  as  a  privilege  by  the  stronger  races. — Pun- 
ishment as  a  declaration  and  measure  of  war  against  an 
enemy  of  peace,  of  law,  of  order,  of  authority,  who  is 
fought  by  society  with  the  weapons  which  war  provides, 
as  a  spirit  dangerous  to  the  community,  as  a  breaker  of 
the  contract  on  which  the  community  is  based,  as  a  rebel, 
a  traitor,  and  a  breaker  of  the  peace. 


14. 


This  list  is  certainly  not  complete;  it  is  obvious  that 
punishment  is  overloaded  with  utilities  of  all  kinds.  This 
makes  it  all  the  more  permissible  to  eliminate  one  supposed 
utility,  which  passes,  at  any  rate  in  the  popular  mind. 
for  its  most  essential  utility,  and  which  is  just  what  even 
now  provides  the  strongest  support  for  that  faith  in  pun- 
ishment which  is  nowadays  for  many  reasons  tottering. 
Punishment  is  supposed  to  have  the  value  of  exciting  in 
the  guilty  the  consciousness  of  guilt;  in  punishment  is 
sought  the  proper  instrumcntum  of  that  psychic  reaction 
which  becomes  known  as  a  "bad  conscience,"  "remorse." 
But  this  theory  is  even,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
present,  a  violation  of  reality  and  psychology:  and  how 
much  more  so  is  the  case  when  we  have  to  deal  with  the 
longest  period  of  man's  history,  his  primitive  history! 
Genuine  remorse  is  certainly  extremely  rare  among  wron-j; 
doers  and  the  victims  of  punishment;  prisons  and  houses 
of  correction  are  not  the  soil  on  which  this  worm  of  re- 
morse pullulates  for  choice— this  is  the  unanimous  opinion 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  73 

of  all  conscientious  observers,  who  in  many  cases  arrive 
at  such  a  judgment  with  enough  reluctance  and  against 
their  own  personal  wishes.  Speaking  generally,  punish- 
ment hardens  and  numbs,  it  produces  concentration,  it 
sharpens  the  consciousness  of  alienation,  it  strengthens  the 
power  of  resistance.  When  it  happens  that  it  breaks  the 
man's  energy  and  brings  about  a  piteous  prostration  and 
abjectness,  such  a  result  is  certainly  even  less  salutary 
than  the  average  effect  of  punishment,  which  is  character- 
ised by  a  harsh  and  sinister  doggedness.  The  thought  of 
those  prehistoric  millennia  brings  us  to  the  unhesitating 
conclusion,  that  it  was  simply  through  punishment  that 
the  evolution  of  the  consciousness  of  guilt  was  most  forc- 
ibly retarded — at  any  rate  in  the  victims  of  the  punishing 
power.  In  particular,  let  us  not  underestimate  the  extent 
to  which,  by  the  very  sight  of  the  judicial  and  executive 
procedure,  the  wrong-doer  is  himself  prevented  from  feel- 
ing that  his  deed,  the  character  of  his  act,  is  intrinsically 
reprehensible:  for  he  sees  clearly  the  same  kind  of  acts 
practised  in  the  service  of  justice,  and  then  called  good, 
and  practised  with  a  good  conscience;  acts  such  as  es- 
pionage, trickery,  bribery,  trapping,  the  whole  intriguing 
and  insidious  art  of  the  policeman  and  the  informer — 
the  whole  system,  in  fact,  manifested  in  the  different  kinds 
of  punishment  (a  system  not  excused  by  passion,  but 
based  on  principle),  of  robbing,  oppressing,  insulting,  im- 
prisoning, racking,  murdering. — All  this  he  sees  treated  by 
his  judges,  not  as  acts  meriting  censure  and  condemnation 
in  themselves,  but  only  in  a  particular  context  and  appli- 
cation. It  was  not  on  this  soil  that  grew  the  "bad  con- 
science," that  most  sinister  and  interesting  plant  of  our 


74  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

earthly  vegetation — in  point  of  fact,  throughout  a  most 
lengthy  period,  no  suggestion  of  having  to  do  with  a 
'•guilty  man"  manifested  itself  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
man  who  judged  and  punished.  One  had  merely  to  deal 
with  an  author  of  an  injury,  an  irresponsible  piece  of  fate. 
And  the  man  himself,  on  whom  the  punishment  subse- 
quently fell  like  a  piece  of  fate,  was  occasioned  no  more 
of  an  "inner  pain"  than  would  be  occasioned  by  the  sud- 
den approach  of  some  uncalculated  event,  some  terrible 
natural  catastrophe,  a  rushing,  crushing  avalanche  against 
which  there  is  no  resistance. 


This  truth  came  insidiously  enough  to  the  consciousness 
of  Spinoza  (to  the  disgust  of  his  commentators,  who  (like 
Kuno  Fischer,  for  instance)  give  themselves  no  end  of 
trouble  to  misunderstand  him  on  this  point),  when  one 
afternoon  (as  he  sat  raking  up  who  knows  what  memory ) 
he  indulged  in  the  question  of  what  was  really  left  for  him 
personally  of  the  celebrated  Morsus  coiiscicnt'uc — Spinoza, 
who  had  relegated  ''good  and  evil"  to  the  sphere  of  human 
imagination,  and  indignantly  defended  the  honour  of  his 
"free"  God  against  those  blasphemers  who  affirmed  that 
God  did  everything  sub  rationc  bom  ("but  this  was  tanta- 
mount to  subordinating  God  to  fate,  and  would  really  be 
the  greatest  of  all  absurdities").  For  Spinoza  the  world 
had  returned  again  to  that  innocence  in  which  it  lay  be- 
fore the  discovery  of  the  bad  conscience:  what,  then,  had 
happened  to  the  morsus  consdentia?  "The  antithesis  of 
gaudium,"  said  he  at  last  to  himself, — "A  sadness  ac- 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  75 

companied  by  the  recollection  of  a  past  event  which  has 
turned  out  contrary  to  all  expectation"  (Eth.  iii.,  Propos. 
xviii.  Schol.  i.  ii.).  Evil-doers  have  throughout  thou- 
sands of  years  felt  when  overtaken  by  punishment  exactly 
like  Spinoza,  on  the  subject  of  their  "offence":  "here  is 
something  which  went  wrong  contrary  to  my  anticipation," 
not  "I  ought  not  to  have  done  this." — They  submitted 
themselves  to  punishment,  just  as  one  submits  one's  self 
to  a  disease,  to  a  misfortune,  or  to  death,  with  that  stub- 
born and  resigned  fatalism  which  gives  the  Russians,  for 
instance,  even  nowadays,  the  advantage  over  us  West- 
erners, in  the  handling  of  life.  If  at  that  period  there  was 
a  critique  of  action,  the  criterion  was  prudence:  the  real 
effect  of  punishment  is  unquestionably  chiefly  to  be  found 
in  a  sharpening  of  the  sense  of  prudence,  in  a  lengthening 
of  the  memory,  in  a  will  to  adopt  more  of  a  policy  of 
caution,  suspicion,  and  secrecy;  in  the  recognition  that 
there  are  many  things  which  are  unquestionably  beyond 
one's  capacity;  in  a  kind  of  improvement  in  self-criticism. 
The  broad  effects  which  can  be  obtained  by  punishment 
in  man  and  beast,  are  the  increase  of  fear,  the  sharpening 
of  the  sense  of  cunning,  the  mastery  of  the  desires:  so 
it  is  that  punishment  tames  man,  but  does  not  make  him 
"better" — it  would  be  more  correct  even  to  go  so  far  as 
to  assert  the  contrary  ("Injury  makes  a  man  cunning," 
says  a  popular  proverb:  so  far  as  it  makes  him  cunning, 
it  makes  him  also  bad.  Fortunately,  it  often  enough 
makes  him  stupid). 

16. 

At  this  juncture  I  cannot  avoid  trying  to  give  a  tenta- 


76  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

tive  and  provisional  expression  to  my  own  hypothesis  con- 
cerning the  origin  of  the  bad  conscience:  it  is  difficult  to 
make  it  fully  appreciated,  and  it  requires  continuous  med- 
itation, attention,  and  digestion.  I  regard  the  bad  con- 
science as  the  serious  illness  which  man  was  bound  to  con- 
tract under  the  stress  of  the  most  radical  change  which  he 
has  ever  experienced — that  change,  when  he  found  himself 
finally  imprisoned  within  the  pale  of  society  and  of  peace. 
Just  like  the  plight  of  the  water-animals,  when  they 
were  compelled  either  to  become  land-animals  or  to  per- 
ish, so  was  the  plight  of  these  half-animals,  perfectly 
adapted  as  they  were  to  the  savage  life  of  war,  prowling, 
and  adventure — suddenly  all  their  instincts  were  rendered 
worthless  and  "switched  off."  Henceforward  they  had  to 
walk  on  their  feet — "carry  themselves,"  whereas  hereto- 
fore they  had  been  carried  by  the  water:  a  terrible  heavi- 
ness oppressed  them.  They  found  themselves  clumsy  in 
obeying  the  simplest  directions,  confronted  with  this  new 
and  unknown  world  they  had  no  longer  their  old  guides — 
the  regulative  instincts  that  had  led  them  unconsciously 
to  safety — they  were  reduced,  were  those  unhappy  crea- 
tures, to  thinking,  inferring,  calculating,  putting  together 
causes  and  results,  reduced  to  that  poorest  and  most  er- 
ratic organ  of  theirs,  their  "consciousness."  I  do  not  be- 
lieve there  was  ever  in  the  world  such  a  feeling  of  misery, 
such  a  leaden  discomfort — further,  those  old  instincts  had 
not  immediately  ceased  their  demands!  Only  it  was  dif- 
ficult and  rarely  possible  to  gratify  them:  speaking 
broadly,  they  were  compelled  to  satisfy  themselves  by 
new  and,  as  it  were,  hole-and-corner  methods.  All  in- 
stincts which  do  not  find  a  vent  without,  turn  inwards — 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  77 

this  is  what  I  mean  by  the  growing  "internalisation"  of 
man:  consequently  we  have  the  first  growth  in  man,  of 
what  subsequently  was  called  his  soul.  The  whole  inner 
world,  originally  as  thin  as  if  it  had  been  stretched  be- 
tween two  layers  of  skin,  burst  apart  and  expanded  pro- 
portionately, and  obtained  depth,  breadth,  and  height, 
when  man's  external  outlet  became  obstructed.  These 
terrible  bulwarks,  with  which  the  social  organisation  pro- 
tected itself  against  the  old  instincts  of  freedom  (punish- 
ments belong  pre-eminently  to  these  bulwarks),  brought 
it  about  that  all  those  instincts  of  wild,  free,  prowling 
man  became  turned  backwards  against  man  himself.  En- 
mity, cruelty,  the  delight  in  persecution,  in  surprises, 
change,  destruction — the  turning  all  these  instincts  against 
their  own  possessors:  this  is  the  origin  of  the  "bad  con- 
science." It  was  man,  who,  lacking  external  enemies  and 
obstacles,  and  imprisoned  as  he  was  in  the  oppressive  nar- 
rowness and  monotony  of  custom,  in  his  own  impatience 
lacerated,  persecuted,  gnawed,  frightened,  and  ill-treated 
himself;  it  was  this  animal  in  the  hands  of  the  tamer, 
which  beat  itself  against  the  bars  of  its  cage;  it  was  this 
being  who,  pining  and  yearning  for  that  desert  home  of 
which  it  had  been  deprived,  was  compelled  to  create  out 
of  its  own  self,  an  adventure,  a  torture-chamber,  a  hazard- 
ous and  perilous  desert — it  was  this  fool,  this  homesick  and 
desperate  prisoner— who  invented  the  "bad  conscience." 
But  thereby  he  introduced  that  most  grave  and  sinister 
illness,  from  which  mankind  has  not  yet  recovered,  the 
suffering  of  man  from  the  disease  called  man,  as  the  re- 
sult of  a  violent  breaking  from  his  animal  past,  the  result, 
as  it  were,  of  a  spasmodic  plunge  into  a  new  environment 


78  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

and  new  conditions  of  existence,  the  result  of  a  declara- 
tion of  war  against  the  old  instincts,  which  up  to  that  time 
had  been  the  staple  of  his  power,  his  joy,  his  formidable- 
ness.  Let  us  immediately  add  that  this  fact  of  an  animal 
ego  turning  against  itself,  taking  part  against  itself,  pro- 
duced in  the  world  so  novel,  profound,  unheard-of,  prob- 
lematic, inconsistent,  and  pregnant  a  phenomenon,  that 
the  aspect  of  the  world  was  radically  altered  thereby.  In 
sooth,  only  divine  spectators  could  have  appreciated  the 
drama  that  then  began,  and  whose  end  baffles  conjecture 
as  yet — a  drama  too  subtle,  too  wonderful,  too  paradox- 
ical to  warrant  its  undergoing  a  nonsensical  and  unheeded 
performance  on  some  random  grotesque  planet!  Hence- 
forth man  is  to  be  counted  as  one  of  the  most  unexpected 
and  sensational  lucky  shots  in  the  game  of  the  "big  baby" 
of  Heracleitus,  whether  he  be  called  Zeus  or  Chance — he 
awakens  on  his  behalf  the  interest,  excitement,  hope,  al- 
most the  confidence,  of  his  being  the  harbinger  and  fore- 
runner of  something,  of  man  being  no  end,  but  only  a 
stage,  an  interlude,  a  bridge,  a  great  promise. 

17- 

It  is  primarily  involved  in  this  hypothesis  of  the  origin 
of  the  bad  conscience,  that  that  alteration  was  no  gradual 
and  no  voluntary  alteration,  and  that  it  did  not  manifest 
itself  as  an  organic  adaptation  to  new  conditions,  but  as 
a  break,  a  jump,  a  necessity,  an  inevitable  fate,  against 
which  there  was  no  resistance  and  never  a  spark  of  re- 
sentment. And  secondarily,  that  the  fitting  of  a  hitherto 
unchecked  and  amorphous  population  into  a  fixed  form, 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  79 

starting  as  it  had  done  in  an  act  of  violence,  could  only 
be  accomplished  by  acts  of  violence  and  nothing  else — 
that  the  oldest  "State"  appeared  consequently  as  a  ghastly 
tyranny,  a  grinding  ruthless  piece  of  machinery,  which 
went  on  working,  till  this  raw  material  of  a  semi-animal 
populace  was  not  only  thoroughly  kneaded  and  elastic, 
but  also  moulded.  I  used  the  word  "State";  my  meaning 
is  self-evident,  namely,  a  herd  of  blonde  beasts  of  prey,  a 
race  of  conquerors  and  masters,  which  with  all  its  war- 
like organisation  and  all  its  organising  power  pounces 
with  its  terrible  claws  en  a  population,  in  numbers  pos- 
sibly tremendously  superior,  but  as  yet  formless,  as  yet 
nomad.  Such  is  the  origin  of  the  "State."  That  fantas- 
tic theory  that  makes  it  begin  with  a  contract  is,  I  think, 
disposed  of.  He  who  can  command,  he  who  is  a  master 
by  "nature,"  he  who  comes  on  the  scene  forceful  in  deed 
and  gesture — what  has  he  to  do  with  contracts?  Such 
beings  defy  calculation,  they  come  like  fate,  without  cause, 
reason,  notice,  excuse,  they  are  there  as  the  lightning  is 
there,  too  terrible,  too  sudden,  too  convincing,  too  "dif- 
ferent," to  be  personally  even  hated.  Their  work  is  an 
instinctive  creating  and  impressing  of  forms,  they  are  the 
most  involuntary,  unconscious  artists  that  there  are:  — 
their  appearance  produces  instantaneously  a  scheme  of 
sovereignty  which  is  live,  in  which  the  functious  are  par- 
titioned and  apportioned,  in  which  above  all  no  part  is  re- 
ceived or  finds  a  place,  until  pregnant  with  a  "meaning" 
in  regard  to  the  whole.  They  are  ignorant  of  the  mean- 
ing of  guilt,  responsibility,  consideration,  are  these  born 
organisers;  in  them  predominates  that  terrible  artist-ego- 
ism, that  gleams  like  brass,  and  that  knows  itself  justified 


So  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

to  all  eternity,  in  its  work,  even  as  a  mother  in  her  child. 
It  is  not  in  them  that  there  grew  the  bad  conscience,  that 
is  elementary  —but  it  would  not  have  grown  without  than, 
repulsive  growth  as  it  was,  it  would  be  missing,  had  not 
a  tremendous  quantity  of  freedom  been  expelled  from  the 
world  by  the  stress  of  their  hammer-strokes,  their  artist 
violence,  or  been  at  any  rate  made  invisible  and,  as  it  were, 
latent.  This  instinct  of  freedom  forced  into  being  latent 
— it  is  already  clear — this  instinct  of  freedom  farced  back, 
trodden  back,  imprisoned  within  itself,  and  finally  only 
able  to  find  vent  and  relief  in  itself;  this,  only  this,  is  the 
beginning  of  the  "bad  conscience." 


18. 


Beware  of  thinking  lightly  of  this  phenomenon,  by  rea- 
son of  its  initial  painful  ugliness.  At  bottom  it  is  the 
same  active  force  which  is  at  work  on  a  more  grandiose 
scale  in  those  potent  artists  and  organisers,  and  builds 
states,  where  here,  internally,  on  a  smaller  and  pettier 
scale  and  with  a  retrogressive  tendency,  makes  itself  a 
bad  conscience  in  the  "labyrinth  of  the  breast,"  to  use 

ethe's  phrase,  and  which  builds  negative  ideals;  it  is, 
I  repeat,  that  identical  instinct  of  freedom  (to  use  my  own 
language,  the  will  to  power) :  only  the  material,  on  which 
this  force  with  all  its  constructive  and  tyrannous  nature 
is  let  loose,  is  here  man  himself,  his  whole  old  animal  self 
— and  not  as  in  the  case  of  that  more  grandiose  and  sensa- 
tional phenomenon,  the  other  man,  other  men.  This  se- 
cret self-tyranny,  this  cruelty  of  the  artist,  this  delight 
in  giving  a  form  to  one's  self  as  a  piece  of  difficult,  re- 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  8r 

fractory,  and  suffering  material,  in  burning  in  a  will,  a 
critique,  a  contradiction,  a  contempt,  a  negation;  this  sin- 
ister and  ghastly  labour  of  love  on  the  part  of  a  soul, 
whose  will  is  cloven  in  two  within  itself,  which  makes  itself 
suffer  from  delight  in  the  infliction  of  suffering;  this 
wholly  active  bad  conscience  has  finally  (as  one  already 
anticipates) — true  fountainhead  as  it  is  of  idealism  and 
imagination — produced  an  abundance  of  novel  and  amaz- 
ing beauty  and  affirmation,  and  perhaps  has  really  been 
the  first  to  give  birth  to  beauty  at  all.  What  would  beauty 
be,  forsooth,  if  its  contradiction  had  not  first  been  pre- 
sented to  consciousness,  if  the  ugly  had  not  first  said  to 
itself,  "I  am  ugly"?  At  any  rate,  after  this  hint  the 
problem  of  how  far  idealism  and  beauty  can  be  traced 
in  such  opposite  ideas  as  "selflessness,"  self-denial,  self- 
sacrifice,  becomes  less  problematical;  and  indubitably  in 
future  we  shall  certainly  know  the  real  and  original  char- 
acter of  the  delight  experienced  by  the  self-less,  the  self- 
denying,  the  self-sacrificing:  this  delight  is  a  phase  of 
cruelty. — So  much  provisionally  for  the  origin  of  "altru- 
ism" as  a  moral  value,  and  the  marking  out  the  ground 
from  which  this  value  has  grown:  it  is  only  the  bad  con- 
science, only  the  will  for  self-abuse,  that  provides  the  nec- 
essary conditions  for  the  existence  of  altruism  as  a  value. 


19. 


Undoubtedly  the  bad  conscience  is  an  illness,  but  an 
illness  as  pregnancy  is  an  illness.  If  we  search  out  the 
conditions  under  which  this  illness  reaches  its  most  ter- 
rible and  sublime  zenith,  we  shall  see  what  really  first 


82  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

brought  about  its  entry  into  the  world.  But  to  do  this 
we  must  take  a  long  breath,  and  we  must  first  of  all  go 
back  once  again  to  an  earlier  point  of  view.  The  relation 
at  civil  law  of  the  ower  to  his  creditor  (which  has 
ready  been  discussed  in  detail),  has  been  interpreted  once 
again  (and  indeed  in  a  manner  which  historically  is  ex- 
ceedingly remarkable  and  suspicious)  into  a  relationship, 
which  is  perhaps  more  incomprehensible  to  us  moderns 
than  to  any  other  era;  that  is,  into  the  relationship  of 
the  existing  generation  to  its  ancestors.  Within  the  origi- 
nal tribal  association — v/e  are  talking  of  primitive  times 
— each  lft  aeration  recognises  a  legal  obligation  to- 

wards the  earlier  generation,  and  particularly  towards  the 
earliest,  which  founded  the  family  (and  this  is  something 
much  more  than  a  mere  sentimental  obligation,  the  ex- 
istence of  which,  during  the  longest  period  of  man's  his- 
tory, is  by  no  means  indisputable).  There  prevails  in 
them  the  conviction  that  it  is  only  thanks  to  sacrifices 
and  efforts  of  their  ancestors,  that  the  race  persists  at  all 
— and  that  this  has  to  be  paid  back  to  them  by  sacrifices 
and  services.     Thus  is  recognized  the  o\  fa  debt, 

which  accumulates  continually  by  reason  of  these  an- 
cestors never  ceasing  in  their  subsequent  life  as  potent 
spirits  to  secure  by  their  power  new  privileges  and  advan- 
tages to  the  race.  Gratis,  perchance?  But  there  is  no 
gratis  for  that  raw  and  "mean-souled"  age.  What  return 
can  be  made?— Sacrifice  (at  first,  nourishment,  in  its 
crude;!  sense),  festivals,  temples,  tributes  of  veneration, 
above  all,  obedience — since  all  customs  are,  qua  works 
of  the  ancestors,  equally  their  precepts  and  commands — 
are   the   ancestors  ever  given   enough?     This  suspicion 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  S3 

remains  and  grows:  from  time  to  time  it  extorts  a  great 
wholesale  ransom,  something  monstrous  in  the  way  of  re- 
payment of  the  creditor  (the  notorious  sacrifice  of  the 
first-born,  for  example,  blood,  human  blood  in  any  case). 
The  fear  of  ancestors  and  their  power,  the  consciousness 
of  owing  debts  to  them,  necessarily  increases,  according 
to  this  kind  of  logic,  in  the  exact  proportion  that  the  race 
itself  increases,  that  the  race  itself  becomes  more  victor- 
ious, more  independent,  more  honoured,  more  feared. 
This,  and  not  the  contrary,  is  the  fact.  Each  step  to- 
wards race  decay,  all  disastrous  events,  all  symptoms  of 
degeneration,  of  approaching  disintegration,  always  dimin- 
ish the  fear  of  the  founders'  spirit,  and  whittle  away  the 
idea  of  his  sagacity,  providence,  and  potent  presence. 
Conceive  this  crude  kind  of  logic  carried  to  its  climax:  it 
follows  that  the  ancestors  of  the  most  powerful  races  must, 
through  the  growing  fear  that  they  exercise  on  the  imagi- 
nations, grow  themselves  into  monstrous  dimensions,  and 
become  relegated  to  the  gloom  of  a  divine  mystery  that 
transcends  imagination — the  ancestor  becomes  at  last 
necessarily  transfigured  into  a  god.  Perhaps  this  is  the 
very  origin  of  the  gods,  that  is,  an  origin  from  fear/  And 
those  who  feel  bound  to  add,  "but  from  piety  also,"  will 
have  difficulty  in  maintaining  this  theory,  with  regard  to 
the  primeval  and  longest  period  of  the  human  race.  And, 
of  course,  this  is  even  more  the  case  as  regards  the  middle 
period,  the  formative  period  of  the  aristocratic  races — 
the  aristocratic  races  which  have  given  back  with  interest 
to  their  founders,  the  ancestors  (heroes,  gods),  all  those 
qualities  which  in  the  meanwhile  have  appeared  in  them- 
selves, that  is,  the  aristocratic  qualities.    We  will  later  on 


84  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

glance  again  at  the  ennobling  and  promotion  of  the  gods 
(which,  of  course,  is  totally  distinct  from  their  "sancti- 
fication") :  let  us  now  provisionally  follow  to  its  end  the 
course  of  the  whole  of  this  development  of  the  conscious- 
ness of  "owing." 


20. 


According  to  the  teaching  of  history,  the  consciousness 
of  owing  debts  to  the  deity  by  no  means  came  to  an  end 
with  the  decay  of  the  clan  organisation  of  society;  just 
as  mankind  has  inherited  the  ideas  of  "good"  and  "bad" 
from  the  race-nobility  (together  with  its  fundamental 
tendency  towards  establishing  social  distinctions) ,  so  with 
the  heritage  of  the  racial  and  tribal  gods  it  has  also  in- 
herited the  incubus  of  debts  as  yet  unpaid  and  the  desire 
to  discharge  them.  The  transition  is  effected  by  those 
large  populations  of  slaves  and  bondsmen,  who,  whether 
through  compulsion  or  through  submission  and  "mimi- 
cry" have  accommodated  themselves  to  the  religion  of 
their  masters;  through  this  channel  these  inherited 
tendencies  inundate  the  world.  The  feeling  of  owing  a 
debt  to  the  deity  has  grown  continuously  for  several  cen- 
turies, always  in  the  same  proportion  in  which  the  idea  of 
God  and  the  consciousness  of  God  have  grown  and  become 
exalted  among  mankind.  (The  whole  history  of  ethnic 
fights,  victories,  reconciliations,  amalgamations,  every- 
thing, in  fact,  which  precedes  the  eventual  classing  of  all 
the  social  elements  in  each  great  race-svnthesis,  are  mir- 
rored in  the  hotch-potch  genealogy  of  their  gods,  in  the 
legends  of  their  fights,  victories,  and  reconciliations.    Prog- 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  85 

ress  towards  universal  empires  invariably  means  progress 
towards  universal  deities;  despotism,  with  its  subjugation 
of  the  independent  nobility,  always  paves  the  way  for 
some  system  or  other  of  monotheism.)  The  appearance 
of  the  Christian  god,  as  the  record  god  up  to  this  time, 
has  for  that  very  reason  brought  equally  into  the  world  the 
record  amount  of  guilt  consciousness.  Granted  that  we 
have  gradually  started  on  the  reverse  movement,  there  is 
no  little  probability  in  the  deduction,  based  on  the  con- 
tinuous decay  in  the  belief  in  the  Christian  god,  to  the 
effect  that  there  also  already  exists  a  considerable  decay 
in  the  human  consciousness  of  owing  (ought) ;  in  fact, 
we  cannot  shut  our  eyes  to  the  prospect  of  the  complete 
and  eventual  triumph  of  atheism  freeing  mankind  from  all 
this  feeling  of  obligation  to  their  origin,  their  causa  prima. 
Atheism  and  a  kind  of  second  innocence  complement  and 
supplement  each  other. 


21. 


So  much  for  my  rough  and  preliminary  sketch  of  the 
interrelation  of  the  ideas  "ought"  (owe)  and  "duty"  with 
the  postulates  of  religion.  I  have  intentionally  shelved  up 
to  the  present  the  actual  moralisation  of  these  ideas  (their 
being  pushed  back  into  the  conscience,  or  more  precisely 
the  interweaving  of  the  bad  conscience  with  the  idea  of 
God),  and  at  the  end  of  the  last  paragraph  used  language 
to  the  effect  that  this  moralisation  did  not  exist,  and  that 
consequently  these  ideas  had  necessarily  come  to  an  end, 
by  reason  of  what  had  happened  to  their  hypothesis,  the 
credence  in  our  "creditor,"  in  God.     The  actual  facts 


86  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

differ  terribly  from  this  theory.     It  is  with  the  moralisa- 
tion  of  the  ideas  "ought"  and  "duty,"  and  with  their 
being  pushed  back  into  the  bad  conscience,  that  comes 
the  first  actual  attempt  to  reverse  the  direction  of  the  de- 
velopment we  have  just  described,  or  at  any  rate  to  arrest 
its  evolution ;  it  is  just  at  this  juncture  that  the  very  hope 
of  an  eventual  redemption  has  to  put  itself  once  for  all 
into  the  prison  of  pessimism,  it  is  at  this  juncture  that  the 
eye  lias  to  recoil  and  rebound  in  despair  from  off  an  ada- 
mantine impossibility,  it  is  at  this  juncture  that  the  ideas 
"guilt"  and  "duty"  have  to  turn  backwards — turn  back- 
wards against  whom?    There  is  no  doubt  about  it;  pri- 
marily against  the  "ower,"  in  whom  the  bad  conscience 
now  establishes  itself,  eats,  extends,  and  grows  like  a  poly- 
pus throughout  its  length  and  breadth,  all  with  such  viru- 
lence, that  at  last,  with  the  impossibility  of  paying  the 
debt,  there  becomes  conceived  the  idea  of  the  impossibility 
of  paying  the  penalty,  the  thought  of  its  inexpiability 
(the  idea  of  "eternal  punishment") — finally,  too,  it  turns 
against  the  "creditor,"  whether  found  in  the  causa  prima 
of  man,  the  origin  of  the  human  race,  its  sire,  who  hence- 
forth becomes  burdened  with  a  curse  (•'Adam,"  "original 
sin,"  "determination  of  the  will"),  or  in  Nature  from 
whose  womb  man  springs,  and  on  whom  the  responsibility 
for  the  principle  of  evil  is  now  cast  ("Diabolisation  of 
ture"),  or  in  existence  generally,  on  this  logic  an  abso- 
lute white  elephant,  with  which  mankind  is  landed  (the 
Nihilistic  flight  from  life,  the  demand  for  Nothingness,  or 
for  the  opposite  of  existence,  for  some  other  existence, 
I'.uddhism  and  the  like) — till  suddenly  we  stand  before 
that  paradoxical  and  awful  expedient,  through  which  a 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  87 

tortured  humanity  has  found  a  temporary  alleviation, 
that  stroke  of  genius  called  Christianity: — God  person- 
ally immolating  himself  for  the  debt  of  man,  God  paying 
himself  personally  out  of  a  pound  of  his  own  flesh,  God 
as  the  one  being  who  can  deliver  man  from  what  man  had 
become  unable  to  deliver  himself — the  creditor  playing 
scapegoat  for  his  debtor,  from  love  (can  you  believe  it?), 
from  love  of  his  debtor!   .  .  . 


22. 


The  reader  will  already  have  conjectured  what  took 
place  on  the  stage  and  behind  the  scenes  of  this  drama. 
That  will  for  self-torture,  that  inverted  cruelty  of  the  ani- 
mal man,  who,  turned  subjective  and  scared  into  intro- 
spection (encaged  as  he  was  in  "the  State,"  as  part  of 
his  taming  process),  invented  the  bad  conscience  so  as 
to  hurt  himself,  after  the  natural  outlet  for  this  will  to 
hurt,  became  blocked — in  other  words,  this  man  of  the 
bad  conscience  exploited  the  religious  hypothesis  so  as  to 
carry  his  martyrdom  to  the  ghastliest  pitch  of  agonised 
intensity.  Owing  something  to  God:  this  thought  becomes 
his  instrument  of  torture.  He  apprehends  in  God  the 
most  extreme  antitheses  that  he  can  find  to  his  own  char- 
acteristic and  ineradicable  animal  instincts,  he  himself 
gives  a  new  interpretation  to  these  animal  instincts  as  be- 
ing against  what  he  "owes"  to  God  (as  enmity,  rebellion, 
and  revolt  against  the  "Lord,"  the  "Father,"  the  "Sire," 
the  "Beginning  of  the  world"),  he  places  himself  between 
the  horns  of  the  dilemma,  "God"  and  "Devil."  Every 
negation  which  he  is  inclined  to  utter  to  himself,  to  the 


88  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

nature,  naturalness,  and  reality  of  his  being,  he  whips 
into  an  ejaculation  of  "yes,"  uttering  it  as  something  ex- 
isting, living,  efficient,  as  being  God,  as  the  holiness  of 
God,  the  judgment  of  God,  as  the  hangmanship  of  God, 
as  transcendence,  as  eternity,  as  unending  torment,  as  hell, 
as  infinity  of  punishment  and  guilt.  This  is  a  kind  of 
madness  of  the  will  in  the  sphere  of  psychological  cruelty 
which  is  absolutely  unparalleled: — man's  will  to  find  him- 
self guilty  and  blameworthy  to  the  point  of  inexpiability, 
his  will  to  think  of  himself  as  punished,  without  the  pun- 
ishment ever  being  able  to  balance  the  guilt,  his  will  to 
infect  and  to  poison  the  fundamental  basis  of  the  universe 
with  the  problem  of  punishment  and  guilt,  in  order  to  cut 
off  once  and  for  all  any  escape  out  of  this  labyrinth  of 
"fixed  ideas,"  his  will  for  rearing  an  ideal — that  of  the 
"holy  God" — face  to  face  with  which  he  can  have  tangible 
proof  of  his  own  unworthiness.  Alas  for  this  mad  melan- 
choly beast  man!  What  phantasies  invade  it,  what  par- 
oxysms of  perversity,  hysterical  senselessness,  and  mental 
bestiality  break  out  immediately,  at  the  very  slightest 
check  on  its  being  the  beast  of  action !  All  this  is  exces- 
sively interesting,  but  at  the  same  time  tainted  with  a 
black,  gloomy,  enervating  melancholy,  so  that  a  forcible 
veto  must  be  invoked  against  looking  too  long  into  these 
abysses.  Here  is  disease,  undubitably,  the  most  ghastly 
disease  that  has  as  yet  played  havoc  among  men:  and  he 
who  can  still  hear  (but  man  turns  now  deaf  ears  to  such 
sounds),  how  in  this  night  of  torment  and  nonsense  there 
has  rung  out  the  cry  of  love,  the  cry  of  the  most  passion- 
ate ecstasy,  of  redemption  in  love,  he  turns  away  gripped 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  89 

by  an  invincible  horror — in  man  there  is  so  much  that  is 
ghastly — too  long  has  the  world  been  a  mad-house. 

23- 

Let  this  suffice  once  for  all  concerning  the  origin  of  the 
"holy  God."  The  fact  that  in  itself  the  conception  of  gods 
is  not  bound  to  lead  necessarily  to  this  degradation  of  the 
imagination  (a  temporary  representation  of  whose  vagar- 
ies we  felt  bound  to  give),  the  fact  that  there  exist  nobler 
methods  of  utilising  the  invention  of  gods  than  in  this 
self-crucifixion  and  self- degradation  of  man,  in  which  the 
last  two  thousand  years  of  Europe  have  been  past  mas- 
ters— these  facts  can  fortunately  be  still  perceived  from 
every  glance  that  we  cast  at  the  Grecian  gods,  these  mir- 
rors of  noble  and  grandiose  men,  in  which  the  animal  in 
man  felt  itself  deified,  and  did  not  devour  itself  in  sub- 
jective frenzy.  These  Greeks  long  utilised  their  gods  as 
simple  buffers  against  the  "bad  conscience"— so  that  they 
could  continue  to  enjoy  their  freedom  of  soul:  this,  of 
course,  is  diametrically  opposed  to  Christianity's  theory 
of  its  god.  They  went  very  jar  on  this  principle,  did  these 
splendid  and  lion-hearted  children;  and  there  is  no  lesser 
authority  than  that  of  the  Homeric  Zeus  for  making  them 
realise  occasionally  that  they  are  taking  life  too  casually. 
"Wonderful,"  says  he  on  one  occasion — it  has  to  do  with 
the  case  of  vEgistheus,  a  very  bad  case  indeed — 

"Wonderful  how  they  grumble,  the  mortals  against  the 
immortals 


9o  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

Only  jrom  us,  they  presume,  comes  evil,  but  in  their 
folly, 

Fashion  they,  spite  of  fate,  the  doom  of  their  own  dis- 
aster." 

Yet  the  reader  will  note  and  observe  that  this  Olympian 
spectator  and  judge  is  far  from  being  angry  with  them 
and  thinking  evil  of  them  on  this  score.  "How  joolisJi  they 
are,"  so  thinks  he  of  the  misdeeds  of  mortals — and  "folly," 
"imprudence,"  "a  little  brain  disturbance."  and  nothing 
more,  are  what  the  Greeks,  even  of  the  strongest,  bravest 
period,  have  admitted  to  be  the  ground  of  much  that  is 
evil  and  fatal. — Folly,  not  sin,  do  you  understand?  .  .  . 
But  even  this  brain  disturbance  was  a  problem — "Come, 
how  is  it  even  possible?  How  could  it  have  really  got  in 
brains  like  ours,  the  brains  of  men  of  aristocratic  ancestry, 
of  men  of  fortune,  of  men  of  good  natural  endowments, 
of  men  of  the  best  society,  of  men  of  nobility  and  virtue?" 
This  was  the  question  that  for  century  on  century  the 
aristocratic  Greek  put  to  himself  when  confronted  with 
every  (to  him  incomprehensible)  outrage  and  sacrilege 
with  which  one  of  his  peers  had  polluted  himself.  "It 
must  be  that  a  god  had  infatuated  him,"  he  would  say  at 
last,  nodding  his  head. — This  solution  is  typical  of  the 
(■reeks,  .  .  .  accordingly  the  gods  in  those  times  sub- 
served the  functions  of  justifying  man  to  a  certain  extent 
even  in  evil— in  those  days  they  took  upon  themselves 
not  the  punishment,  but,  what  is  more  noble,  the  guilt. 

24. 

I  conclude  with  three  queries,  as  you  will  sec.     "Is  an 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  91 

ideal  actually  set  up  here,  or  is  one  pulled  down?"  I  am 
perhaps  asked.  .  .  .  But  have  ye  sufficiently  asked  your- 
selves how  dear  a  payment  has  the  setting  up  of  every 
ideal  in  the  world  exacted?  To  achieve  that  consumma- 
tion how  much  truth  must  always  be  traduced  and  mis- 
understood, how  many  lies  must  be  sanctified,  hew  much 
conscience  has  got  to  be  disturbed,  how  many  pounds  of 
"God"  have  got  to  be  sacrificed  every  time?^  To  enable 
a  sanctuary  to  be  set  up  a  sanctuary  has  got  to  be  de- 
stroyed: that  is  a  law — show  me  an  instance  where  it  has 
not  been  fulfilled!  .  .  .  We  modern  men,  we  inherit  the 
immemorial  tradition  of  vivisecting  the  conscience,  and 
practising  cruelty  to  our  animal  selves.  That  is  the  sphere 
of  our  most  protracted  training,  perhaps  of  our  artistic 
prowess,  at  any  rate  of  our  dilettantism  and  our  perverted 
taste.  Man  has  for  too  long  regarded  his  natural  pro- 
clivities with  an  "evil  eye,"  so  that  eventually  they  have 
become  in  his  system  affiliated  to  a  bad  conscience.  A 
converse  endeavour  would  be  intrinsically  feasible — but 
who  is  strong  enough  to  attempt  it? — namely,  to  affiliate 
to  the  "bad  conscience"  all  those  unnatural  proclivities, 
all  those  transcendental  aspirations,  contrary  to  sense, 
instinct,  nature,  and  animalism — in  short,  all  past  and 
present  ideals,  which  are  all  ideals  opposed  to  life,  and 
traducing  the  world.  To  whom  is  one  to  turn  nowadays 
with  such  hopes  and  pretensions? — It  is  just  the  good 
men  that  we  should  thus  bring  about  our  ears;  and  in  ad- 
dition, as  stands  to  reason,  the  indolent,  the  hedgers,  the 
vain,  the  hysterical,  the  tired.  .  .  .  What  is  more  offensive 
or  more  thoroughly  calculated  to  alienate,  than  giving  any 
hint  of  the  exalted  severity  with  which  we  treat  ourselves? 


92  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

And  again  how  conciliatory,  how  full  of  love  does  all  the 
world  show  itself  towards  us  so  soon  as  we  do  as  all  the 
world  does,  and  'iet  ourselves  go"  like  all  the  world.  For 
such  a  consummation  we  need  spirits  of  different  calibre 
than  seems  really  feasible  in  this  age;  spirits  rendered 
potent  through  wars  and  victories,  to  whom  conquest, 
adventure,  danger,  even  pain,  have  become  a  need;  for 
such  a  consummation  we  need  habituation  to  sharp,  rare 
air,  to  winter  wanderings,  to  literal  and  metaphorical  ice 
and  mountains;  we  even  need  a  kind  of  sublime  malice, 
a  supreme  and  most  self-conscious  insolence  of  knowledge, 
which  is  the  appanage  of  great  health;  we  need  (to  sum- 
marise the  awful  truth)  just  this  great  health'. 

Is  this  even  feasible  to-day?  .  .  .  But  some  day,  in  a 
stronger  age  than  this  rotting  and  introspective  present, 
must  he  in  sooth  come  to  us,  even  the  redeemer  of  great 
love  and  scorn,  the  creative  spirit,  rebounding  by  the  im- 
petus of  his  own  force  back  again  away  from  every  trans- 
cendental plane  and  dimension,  he  whose  solitude  is  mis- 
understanded  of  the  people,  as  though  it  were  a  flight 
jrom  reality; — while  actually  it  is  only  his  diving,  bur- 
rowing, and  penetrating  into  reality,  so  that  when  he 
comes  again  to  the  light  he  can  at  once  bring  about  by 
these  means  the  redemption  of  this  reality;  its  redemption 
from  the  curse  which  the  old  ideal  has  laid  upon  it.  This 
man  of  the  future,  who  in  this  wise  will  redeem  us  from 
the  old  ideal,  as  he  will  from  that  ideal's  necessary  corol- 
lary of  great  nausea,  will  to  nothingness,  and  Nihilism; 
this  tocsin  of  noon  and  of  the  great  verdict,  which  renders 
the  will  again  free,  who  gives  back  to  the  world  its  goal 
and  to  man  his  hope,  this  Antichrist  and  Antinihilist,  this 


"GUILT"  AND  "BAD  CONSCIENCE"  93 

conqueror  of  God  and  of  Nothingness — he  must  one  day 
come. 

25- 

But  what  am  I  talking  of?  Enough!  Enough?  At 
this  juncture  I  have  only  one  proper  course,  silence: 
otherwise  I  trespass  on  a  domain  open  alone  to  one  who 
is  younger  than  I,  one  stronger,  more  "future"  than  I — 
open  alone  to  ZaratJmstra,  Zarathustra  the  godless. 


THIRD  ESSAY. 

WHAT  IS  THE  MEANING  OF  ASCETIC  IDEALS? 

"Careless,  mocking,  forceful — so  does  wisdom  wish  us: 
she  is  a  woman,  and  never  loves  any  one  but  a  warrior." 

Thus  Spake  Zarathustra. 

i. 

What  is  the  meaning  of  ascetic  ideals?  In  artists, 
nothing,  or  too  much;  in  philosophers  and  scholars,  a  kind 
of  "flair"  and  instinct  for  the  conditions  most  favourable 
to  advanced  intellectualism;  in  women,  at  best  an  addi- 
tional seductive  fascination,  a  little  morbidezza  on  a  fine 
piece  of  flesh,  the  angelhood  of  a  fat,  pretty  animal;  in 
physiological  failures  and  whiners  (in  the  majority  of 
mortals),  an  attempt  to  pose  as  "too  good"  for  this  world, 
a  holy  form  of  debauchery,  their  chief  weapon  in  the  bat- 
tle with  lingering  pain  and  ennui;  in  priests,  the  actual 
priestly  faith,  their  best  engine  of  power,  and  also  the 
supreme  authority  for  power;  in  saints,  finally  a  pretext 
for  hibernation,  their  novissima  gloria  cupido,  their  peace 
in  nothingness  ("God"),  their  form  of  madness. 

but  in  the  very  fact  that  the  ascetic  ideal  has  meant  so 

94 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  95 

much  to  man,  lies  expressed  the  fundamental  feature  of 
man's  will,  his  horror  vacui:  he  needs  a  goal — and  he  will 
sooner  will  nothingness  than  not  will  at  all. — Am  I  not 
understood? — Have  I  not  been  understood? — "Certainly 
not,  sir?" — Well,  let  us  begin  at  the  beginning. 


2. 


What  is  the  meaning  of  ascetic  ideals?  Or,  to  take  an 
individual  case  in  regard  to  which  I  have  often  been  con- 
sulted, what  is  the  meaning,  for  example,  of  an  artist  like 
Richard  Wagner  paying  homage  to  chastity  in  his  old 
age?  He  had  always  done  so,  of  course,  in  a  certain  sense, 
but  it  was  not  till  quite  the  end,  that  he  did  so  in  an 
ascetic  sense.  What  is  the  meaning  of  this  "change  of  at- 
titude," this  radical  revolution  in  his  attitude — for  that 
was  what  it  was?  Wagner  veered  thereby  straight  round 
into  his  own  opposite.  What  is  the  meaning  of  an  artist 
veering  round  into  his  own  opposite?  At  this  point 
(granted  that  we  do  not  mind  stopping  a  little  over  this 
question),  we  immediately  call  to  mind  the  best,  strong- 
est, gayest,  and  boldest  period,  that  there  perhaps  ever  was 
in  Wagner's  life:  that  was  the  period  when  he  was  gen- 
uinely and  deeply  occupied  with  the  idea  of  "Luther's 
Wedding."  Who  knows  what  chance  is  responsible  for 
our  now  having  the  Meister singers  instead  of  this  wed- 
ding music?  And  how  much  in  the  latter  is  perhaps  just 
an  echo  of  the  former?  But  there  is  no  doubt  but  that 
the  theme  would  have  dealt  with  the  praise  of  chastity. 
And  certainly  it  would  also  have  dealt  with  the  praise  of 
sensuality,  and  even  so,  it  would  seem  quite  in  order,  and 


96  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

even  so,  it  would  have  been  equally  Wagnerian.  For 
there  is  no  necessary  antithesis  between  chastity  and  sen- 
suality: every  good  marriage,  every  authentic  heart-felt 
love  transcends  this  antithesis.  Wagner  would,  it  seems 
to  me,  have  done  well  to  have  brought  this  pleasing  reality 
home  once  again  to  his  Germans,  by  means  of  a  bold  and 
graceful  "Luther  Comedy,"  for  there  were  and  are  among 
the  Germans  many  revilers  of  sensuality;  and  perhaps 
Luther's  greatest  merit  lies  just  in  the  fact  of  his  having 
had  the  courage  of  his  sensuality  (it  used  to  be  called, 
prettily  enough,  "evangelistic  freedom'').  But  even  in 
those  cases  where  that  antithesis  between  chastity  and 
sensuality  does  exist,  there  has  fortunately  been  for  some 
time  no  necessity  for  it  to  be  in  any  way  a  tragic  anti- 
thesis. This  should,  at  any  rate,  be  the  case  with  all  be- 
ings who  are  sound  in  mind  and  body,  who  are  far  from 
reckoning  their  delicate  balance  between  "animal"  and 
"angel,"  as  being  on  the  face  of  it  one  of  the  principles  op- 
posed to  existence — the  most  subtle  and  brilliant  spirits, 
such  as  Goethe,  such  as  Hafiz,  have  even  seen  in  this  a 
further  charm  of  life.  Such  "conflicts"  actually  allure 
one  to  life.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  only  too  clear  that 
when  once  these  ruined  swine  are  reduced  to  worshipping 
chastity — and  there  are  such  swine — they  only  see  and 
worship  in  it  the  antithesis  to  themselves,  the  antithesis 
to  ruined  swine.  Oh,  what  a  tragic  grunting  and  eager- 
ness! You  can  just  think  of  it — they  worship  that  pain- 
ful and  superfluous  contrast,  which  Richard  Wagner  in 
his  latter  days  undoubtedly  wished  to  set  to  music,  and 
to  place  on  the  stage!     "For  what  purpose,  \or  sooth'" 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  97 

as  we  may  reasonably  ask.    What  did  the  swine  matter 
to  him;  what  do  they  matter  to  us? 


At  this  point  it  is  impossible  to  beg  the  further  question 
of  what  he  really  had  to  do  with  that  manly  (ah,  so  un- 
manly) country  bumpkin,  that  poor  devil  and  natural, 
Parsifal,  whom  he  eventually  made  a  Catholic  by  such 
fraudulent  devices.  What?  Was  this  Parsifal  really 
meant  seriously?  One  might  be  tempted  to  suppose  the 
contrary,  even  to  wish  it — that  the  Wagnerian  Parsifal 
was  meant  joyously,  like  a  concluding  play  of  a  trilogy 
or  satyric  drama,  in  which  Wagner  the  tragedian  wished  to 
take  farewell  of  us,  of  himself,  above  all  of  tragedy,  and 
to  do  so  in  a  manner  that  should  be  quite  fitting  and 
worthy,  that  is,  with  an  excess  of  the  most  extreme  and 
flippant  parody  of  the  tragic  itself,  of  the  ghastly  earthly 
seriousness  and  earthly  woe  of  old — a  parody  of  that  most 
crude  phase  in  the  unnaturalness  of  the  ascetic  ideal, 
that  had  at  length  been  overcome.  That,  as  I  have  said, 
would  have  been  quite  worthy  of  a  great  tragedian;  who 
like  every  artist  first  attains  the  supreme  pinnacle  of  his 
greatness  when  he  can  look  down  into  himself  and  his  art, 
when  he  can  laugh  at  himself.  Is  Wagner's  Parsifal  his 
secret  laugh  of  superiority  over  himself,  the  triumph  of 
that  supreme  artistic  freedom  and  artistic  transcendency 
which  he  has  at  length  attained.  We  might,  I  repeat,  wish 
it  were  so,  for  what  can  Parsifal,  taken  seriously,  amount 
to?    Is  it  really  necessary  to  see  in  it  (according  to  an  ex- 


g8  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

pression  once  used  against  me)  the  product  of  an  insane 
hate  of  knowledge,  mind,  and  flesh?  A  curse  on  flesh  and 
spirit  in  one  breath  of  hate?  An  apostasy  and  reversion 
to  the  morbid  Christian  and  obscurantist  ideals?  And 
finally  a  self-negation  and  self-elimination  on  the  part  of 
an  artist,  who  till  then  had  devoted  all  the  strength  of  his 
will  to  the  contrary,  namely,  the  highest  artistic  expres- 
sion of  soul  and  body.  And  not  only  his  art;  of  his  life  as 
well.  Just  remember  with  what  enthusiasm  Wagner  fol- 
lowed in  the  footsteps  of  Feuerbach.  Feuerbach's  motto 
of  "healthy  sensuality"  rang  in  the  ears  of  Wagner  dur- 
ing the  thirties  and  forties  of  the  century,  as  it  did  in  the 
ears  of  many  Germans  (they  dubbed  themselves  "Young 
Germans"),  like  the  word  of  redemption.  Did  he  event- 
ually change  Ids  mind  on  the  subject?  For  it  seems  at 
any  rate  that  he  eventually  wished  to  change  his  teach- 
ing on  that  subject  .  .  .  and  not  only  is  that  the  case 
with  the  Parsifal  trumpets  on  the  stage:  in  the  melancholy, 
cramped,  and  embarrassed  lucubrations  of  his  later  years, 
there  are  a  hundred  places  in  which  there  are  manifesta- 
tions of  a  secret  wish  and  will,  a  despondent,  uncertain, 
unavowed  will  to  preach  actual  retrogression,  conversion, 
Christianity,  medkevalism,  and  to  say  to  his  disciples, 
"All  is  vanity!  Seek  salvation  elsewhere!"  Even  the 
"blood  of  the  Redeemer"  is  once  invoked. 


Let  me  speak  out  my  mind  in  a  case  like  this,  which 
has  many  painful  elements — and  it  is  a  typical  case:  it  is 
certainly  best  to  separate  an  artist  from  his  work  so  com- 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  99 

pletely  that  he  cannot  be  taken  as  seriously  as  his  work. 
He  is  after  all  merely  the  presupposition  of  his  work,  the 
womb,  the  soil,  in  certain  cases  the  dung  and  manure,  on 
which  and  out  of  which  it  grows — and  consequently,  in 
most  cases,  something  that  must  be  forgotten  if  the  work 
itself  is  to  be  enjoyed.  The  insight  into  the  origin  of  a 
work  is  a  matter  for  psychologists  and  vivisectors,  but 
never  either  in  the  present  or  the  future  for  the  aesthetes, 
the  artists.  The  author  and  creator  of  Parsifal  was  as 
little  spared  the  necessity  of  sinking  and  living  himself 
into  the  terrible  depths  and  foundations  of  mediaeval  soul- 
contrasts,  the  necessity  of  a  malignant  abstraction  from 
all  intellectual  elevation,  severity,  and  discipline,  the  ne- 
cessity of  a  kind  of  mental  perversity  (if  the  reader  will 
pardon  me  such  a  word),  as  little  as  a  pregnant  woman  is 
spared  the  horrors  and  marvels  of  pregnancy,  which,  as  I 
have  said,  must  be  forgotten  if  the  child  is  to  be  enjoyed. 
We  must  guard  ourselves  against  the  confusion,  into 
which  an  artist  himself  would  fall  only  too  easily  (to  em- 
ploy the  English  terminology)  out  of  psychological  "con- 
tiguity"; as  though  the  artist' himself  actually  were  the 
object  which  he  is  able  to  represent,  imagine,  and  express. 
In  point  of  fact,  the  position  is  that  even  if  he  conceived 
he  were  such  an  object,  he  would  certainly  not  represent, 
conceive,  express  it.  Homer  would  not  have  created  an 
Achilles,  nor  Goethe  a  Faust,  if  Homer  had  been  an 
Achilles  or  if  Goethe  had  been  a  Faust.  A  complete  and 
perfect  artist  is  to  all  eternity  separated  from  the  "real," 
from  the  actual ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  will  be  appreciated 
that  he  can  at  times  get  tired  to  the  point  of  despair  of  this 
eternal  "unreality"  and  falseness  of  his  innermost  being — 


ioo  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

and  that  he  then  sometimes  attempts  to  trespass  on  to  the 
most  forbidden  ground,  on  reality,  and  attempts  to  have 
real  existence.  With  what  success?  The  success  will  be 
guessed — it  is  the  typical  velleity  of  the  artist;  the  same 
velleity  to  which  Wagner  fell  a  victim  in  his  old  age,  and 
for  which  he  had  to  pay  so  dearly  and  so  fatally  (he  lost 
thereby  his  most  valuable  friends).  But  after  all,  quite 
apart  from  this  velleity,  who  would  not  wish  emphatically 
for  Wagner's  own  sake  that  he  had  taken  farewell  of  us 
and  of  his  art  in  a  different  manner,  not  with  a  Parsifal, 
but  in  more  victorious,  more  self-confident,  more  Wag- 
nerian style — a  style  less  misleading,  a  style  less  ambig- 
uous with  regard  to  his  whole  meaning,  less  Schopen- 
hauerian,  less  Nihilistic?  .  .  . 

5- 
WTiat,  then,  is  the  meaning  of  ascetic  ideals?     In  the 

case  of  an  artist  we  are  getting  to  understand  their  mean- 
ing: Nothing  at  all  .  .  .  or  so  much  that  it  is  as  good  as 
nothing  at  all.  Indeed,  what  is  the  use  of  them?  Our 
artists  have  for  a  long  time  past  not  taken  up  a  sufficiently 
independent  attitude,  either  in  the  world  or  against  it,  to 
warrant  their  valuations  and  the  changes  in  these  valua- 
tions exciting  interest.  At  all  times  they  have  played  the 
valet  of  some  morality,  philosophy,  or  religion,  quite  apart 
from  the  fact  that  unfortunately  they  have  often  enough 
been  the  inordinately  supple  courtiers  of  their  clients  and 
patrons,  and  the  inquisitive  toadies  of  the  powers  that  are 
existing,  or  even  of  the  new  powers  to  come.  To  put  it  at 
the  lowest,  they  always  need  a  rampart,  a  support,  an  al- 
ready constituted  authority:  artists  never  stand  by  them- 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  101 

selves,  standing  alone  is  opposed  to  their  deepest  instincts. 
So,  for  example,  did  Richard  Wagner  take,  "when  the 
time  had  come,"  the  philosopher  Schopenhauer  for  his 
covering  man  in  front,  for  his  rampart.    Who  would  con- 
sider it  even  thinkable,  that  he  would  have  had  the  courage 
for  an  ascetic  ideal,  without  the  support  afforded  him  by 
the  philosophy  of  Schopenhauer,  without  the  authority  of 
Schopenhauer,  which  dominated  Europe  in  the  seventies? 
(This  is  without  consideration  of  the  question  whether  an 
artist  without  the  milk  *  of  an  orthodoxy  would  have  been 
possible  at  all.)     This  brings  us  to  the  more  serious  ques- 
tion: What  is  the  meaning  of  a  real  philosopher  paying 
homage  to  the  ascetic  ideal,  a  really  self-dependent  intel- 
lect like  Schopenhauer,  a  man  and  knight  with  a  glance 
of  bronze,  who  has  the  courage  to  be  himself,  who  knows 
how  to  stand  alone  without  first  waiting  for  men  who  cover 
him  in  front,  and  the  nods  of  his  superiors?    Let  us  now 
consider  at  once  the  remarkable  attitude  of  Schopenhauer 
towards  art,  an  attitude  which  has  even  a  fascination  for 
certain   types.     For  that  is  obviously  the  reason  why 
Richard  Wagner  all  at  once  went  over  to  Schopenhauer 
(persuaded  thereto,  as  one  knows,  by  a  poet,  Herwegh), 
went  over  so  completely  that  there  ensued  the  cleavage 
of  a  complete  theoretic  contradiction  between  his  earlier 
and  his  later  aesthetic  faiths — the  earlier,   for  example, 
being  expressed  in  Opera  and  Drama,  the  later  in  the 
writings  which  he  published  from  1870  onwards.    In  par- 
ticular, Wagner  from  that  time  onwards  (and  this  is  the 
volte-face  which  alienates  us  the  most)  had  no  scruples 


*  An  allusion  to  the  celebrated  monologue  in  William  Tell. 


102  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

about  changing  his  judgment  concerning  the  value  and 
position  of  music  itself.  What  did  he  care  if  up  to  that 
time  he  had  made  of  music  a  means,  a  medium,  a 
"woman,"  that  in  order  to  thrive  needed  an  end,  a  man — 
that  is,  the  drama?  He  suddenly  realised  that  more  could 
be  effected  by  the  novelty  of  the  Schopenhauerian  theory 
in  majoretn  musiccc  gloriam — that  is  to  say,  by  means  of 
the  sovereignty  of  music,  as  Schopenhauer  understood  it; 
music  abstracted  from  and  opposed  to  all  the  other  arts, 
music  as  the  independent  art-in-itself,  not  like  the  otfc 
arts,  affording  reflections  of  the  phenomenal  world,  but 
rather  the  language  of  the  will  itself,  speaking  straight  out 
of  the  "abyss"  as  its  most  personal,  original,  and  direct 
manifestation.  This  extraordinary  rise  in  the  value  of 
music  (a  rise  which  seemed  to  grow  out  of  the  Schopen- 
hauerian philosophy)  was  at  once  accompanied  by  an  un- 
precedented rise  in  the  estimation  in  which  the  musician 
himself  was  held:  he  became  now  an  oracle,  a  priest,  nay, 
more  than  a  priest,  a  kind  of  mouthpiece  for  the  "intrinsic 
essence  of  things,"  a  telephone  from  the  other  world — 
from  henceforward  he  talked  not  only  music,  did  this  ven- 
triloquist of  God,  he  talked  metaphysic;  what  wonder  that 
one  day  he  eventually  talked  ascetic  ideals! 


6. 


Schopenhauer  has  made  use  of  the  Kantian  treatm?nt 
of  the  aesthetic  problem — though  he  certainly  did  not  re- 
gard it  with  the  Kantian  eyes.  Kant  thought  that  he 
showed  honour  to  art  when  he  favoured  and  placed  in  the 
foreground  those  of  the  predicates  of  the  beautiful,  which 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  103 

constitute  the  honour  of  knowledge:  impersonality  and 
universality.  This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  whether  this 
was  not  a  complete  mistake;  all  that  I  wish  to  emphasise 
is  that  Kant,  just  like  other  philosophers,  instead  of  en- 
visaging the  aesthetic  problem  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
experiences  of  the  artist  (the  creator),  has  only  considered 
art  and  beauty  from  the  standpoint  of  the  spectator,  and 
has  thereby  imperceptibly  imported  the  spectator  himself 
into  the  idea  of  the  "beautiful"!  But  if  only  the  philoso- 
phers of  the  beautiful  had  sufficient  knowledge  of  this 
"spectator"! — Knowledge  of  him  as  a  great  fact  of  per- 
sonality, as  a  great  experience,  as  a  wealth  of  strong  and 
most  individual  events,  desires,  surprises,  and  raptures  in 
the  sphere  of  beauty!  But,  as  I  feared,  the  contrary  was 
always  the  case.  And  so  we  get  from  our  philosophers, 
from  the  very  beginning,  definitions  on  which  the  lack  of 
a  subtler  personal  experience  squats  like  a  fat  worm  of 
crass  error,  as  it  does  on  Kant's  famous  definition  of  the 
beautiful.  "That  is  beautiful,"  says  Kant,  "which  pleases 
without  interesting."  Without  interesting!  Compare  this 
definition  with  this  other  one,  made  by  a  real  "spectator" 
and  "artist" — by  Stendhal,  who  once  called  the  beautiful 
une  promesse  de  bonheur.  Here,  at  any  rate,  the  one 
point  which  Kant  makes  prominent  in  the  aesthetic  position 
is  repudiated  and  eliminated — le  desinteressement.  Who 
is  right,  Kant  or  Stendhal?  When,  forsooth,  our  aesthetes 
never  get  tired  of  throwing  into  the  scales  in  Kant's  favour 
the  fact  that  under  the  magic  of  beauty  men  can  look  at 
even  naked  female  statues  "without  interest,"  wTe  can 
certainly  laugh  a  little  at  their  expense: — in  regard  to 
this  ticklish  point  the  experiences  of  artists  are  more 


104  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

''interesting,"  and  at  any  rate  Pygmalion  was  not  neces- 
sarily an  "unaesthetic  man."  Let  us  think  all  the  better 
of  the  innocence  of  our  aesthetes,  reflected  as  it  is  in  such 
arguments;  let  us,  for  instance,  count  to  Kant's  honour 
the  country-parson  naivete  of  his  doctrine  concerning  the 
peculiar  character  of  the  sense  of  touch!  And  here  we 
come  back  to  Schopenhauer,  who  stood  in  much  closer 
neighbourhood  to  the  arts  than  did  Kant,  and  yet  never 
escaped  outside  the  pale  of  the  Kantian  definition;  how 
was  that?  The  circumstance  is  marvellous  enough:  he 
interprets  the  expression,  "without  interest,"  in  the  most 
personal  fashion,  out  of  an  experience  which  must  in  his 
case  have  been  part  and  parcel  of  his  regular  routine.  On 
few  subjects  does  Schopenhauer  speak  with  such  certainty 
as  on  the  working  of  aesthetic  contemplation:  he  says  of 
it  that  it  simply  counteracts  sexual  interest,  like  lupulin 
and  camphor;  he  never  gets  tired  of  glorifying  this  escape 
from  the  "Life-will"  as  the  great  advantage  and  utility  of 
the  aesthetic  state.  In  fact,  one  is  tempted  to  ask  if  his 
fundamental  conception  of  Will  and  Idea,  the  thought  that 
there  can  only  exist  freedom  from  the  "will"  by  means  of 
"idea,"  did  not  originate  in  a  generalisation  from  this  sex- 
ual experience.  (In  all  questions  concerning  the  Schopen- 
hauerian  philosophy,  one  should,  by  the  bye,  never  lose 
sight  of  the  consideration  that  it  is  the  conception  of  a 
youth  of  twenty-six,  so  that  it  participates  not  only  in 
what  is  peculiar  to  Schopenhauer's  life,  but  in  what  is 
peculiar  to  that  special  period  of  his  life.)  Let  us  listen, 
for  instance,  to  one  of  the  most  expressive  among  the 
countless  passages  which  he  has  written  in  honour  of  the 
aesthetic  state  (World  as  Will  and  Idea,  i.  231);  let  us 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  105 

listen  to  the  tone,  the  suffering,  the  happiness,  the  grati- 
tude, with  which  such  words  are  uttered:  "This  is  the 
painless  state  which  Epicurus  praised  as  the  highest  good 
and  as  the  state  of  the  gods;  we  are  during  that  moment 
freed  from  the  vile  pressure  of  the  will,  we  celebrate  the 
Sabbath  of  the  will's  hard  labour,  the  wheel  of  Ixion 
stands  still."  What  vehemence  of  language!  What 
images  of  anguish  and  protracted  revulsion!  How  almost 
pathological  is  that  temporal  antithesis  between  "that  mo- 
ment" and  everything  else,  the  "wheel  of  Ixion,"  "the 
hard  labour  of  the  will,"  "the  vile  pressure  of  the  will." 
But  granted  that  Schopenhauer  was  a  hundred  times  right 
for  himself  personally,  how  does  that  help  our  insight  into 
the  nature  of  the  beautiful?  Schopenhauer  has  described 
one  effect  of  the  beautiful, — the  calming  of  the  will,— 
but  is  this  effect  really  normal?  As  has  been  mentioned, 
Stendhal,  an  equally  sensual  but  more  happily  constituted 
nature  than  Schopenhauer,  gives  prominence  to  another 
effect  of  the  "beautiful."  "The  beautiful  promises  hap- 
piness." To  him  it  is  just  the  excitement  of  the  will  (the 
"interest")  by  the  beauty  that  seems  the  essential  fact. 
And  does  not  Schopenhauer  ultimately  lay  himself  open  to 
the  objection,  that  he  is  quite  wrong  in  regarding  himself 
as  a  Kantian  on  this  point,  that  he  has  absolutely  failed 
to  understand  in  a  Kantian  sense  the  Kantian  definition 
of  the  beautiful — that  the  beautiful  pleased  him  as  well 
by  means  of  an  interest,  by  means,  in  fact,  of  the  strong- 
est and  most  personal  interest  of  all,  that  of  the  victim 
of  torture  who  escapes  from  his  torture? — And  to  come 
back  again  to  our  first  question,  "What  is  the  meaning 
of  a  philosopher  paying  homage  to  ascetic  ideals?"    We 


106  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

get  now,  at  any  rate,  a  first  hint;  he  wishes  to  escape  from 
a  torture. 


Let  us  beware  of  making  dismal  faces  at  the  word 
"torture" — there  is  certainly  in  this  case  enough  to  de- 
duct, enough  to  discount — there  is  even  something  to 
laugh  at.  For  we  must  certainly  not  underestimate  the 
fact  that  Schopenhauer,  who  in  practice  treated  sexuality 
as  a  personal  enemy  (including  its  tool,  woman,  that 
"instrumentum  diaboli"),  needed  enemies  to  keep  him  in 
a  good  humour;  that  he  loved  grim,  bitter,  blackish-green 
words;  that  he  raged  for  the  sake  of  raging,  out  of  pas- 
sion; that  he  would  have  grown  ill,  would  have  become 
a  pessimist  (for  he  was  not  a  pessimist,  however  much  he 
wished  to  be),  without  his  enemies,  without  Hegel, 
woman,  sensuality,  and  the  whole  "will  for  existence" 
"keeping  on."  Without  them  Schopenhauer  would  not 
have  "kept  on,"  that  is  a  safe  wager;  he  would  have  run 
away:  but  his  enemies  held  him  fast,  his  enemies  always 
enticed  him  back  again  to  existence,  his  wrath  was  just 
as  theirs  was  to  the  ancient  Cynics,  his  balm,  his  recrea- 
tion, his  recompense,  his  remcd'nim  against  disgust,  his 
liappiness.  So  much  with  regard  to  what  is  most  per- 
sonal in  the  case  of  Schopenhauer;  on  the  other  ha 
there  is  still  much  which  is  typical  in  him — and  only  now 
we  come  back  to  our  problem.  It  is  an  accepted  and 
indisputable  fact,  so  long  as  there  are  philosophers  in 
the  world,  and  wherever  philosophers  have  existed  (from 
India  to  England,  to  take  the  opposite  poles  of  philo- 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  107 

sophic  ability),  that  there  exists  a  real  irritation  and 
rancour  on  the  part  of  philosophers  towards  sensuality. 
Schopenhauer  is  merely  the  most  eloquent,  and  if  one  has 
the  ear  for  it,  also  the  most  fascinating  and  enchanting 
outburst.  There  similarly  exists  a  real  philosophic  bias 
and  affection  for  the  whole  ascetic  ideal;  there  should  be 
no  illusions  on  this  score.  Both  these  feelings,  as  has  been 
said,  belong  to  the  type;  if  a  philosopher  lacks  both  of 
them,  then  he  is — you  may  be  certain  of  it — never  any- 
thing but  a  "pseudo."  What  does  this  mean?  For  this 
state  of  affairs  must  first  be  interpreted:  in  itself  it  stands 
there  stupid  to  all  eternity,  like  any  "Thing-in-itself." 
Every  animal,  including  la  bete  philosophe,  strives  in- 
stinctively after  an  optimum  of  favourable  conditions,  un- 
der which  he  can  let  his  whole  strength  have  play,  and 
achieves  his  maximum  consciousness  of  power;  with  equal 
instinctiveness,  and  with  a  fine  perceptive  flair  which  is 
superior  to  any  reason,  every  animal  shudders  mortally 
at  every  kind  of  disturbance  and  hindrance  which  ob- 
structs or  could  obstruct  his  way  to  that  optimum  (it  is 
not  his  way  to  happiness  of  which  I  am  talking,  but  his 
way  to  power,  to  action,  the  most  powerful  action,  and 
in  point  of  fact  in  many  cases  his  way  to  unhappiness) . 
Similarly,  the  philosopher  shudders  mortally  at  marriage, 
together  with  all  that  could  persuade  him  to  it — marriage 
as  a  fatal  hindrance  on  the  way  to  the  optimum.  Up  to 
the  present  what  great  philosophers  have  been  married? 
Heracleitus,  Plato,  Descartes,  Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  Kant, 
Schopenhauer — they  were  not  married,  and,  further,  one 
cannot  imagine  them  as  married.  A  married  philosopher 
belongs  to  comedy,  that  is  my  rule;  as  for  that  exception 


io8  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

of  a  Socrates — the  malicious  Socrates  married  himself,  it 
seems,  ironice,  just  to  prove  this  very  rule.  Every  philoso- 
pher would  say,  as  Buddha  said,  when  the  birth  of  a  son 
was  announced  to  him:  "Rahoula  has  been  born  to  me, 
a  fetter  has  been  forged  for  me"  (Rahoula  means  here 
"a  little  demon") ;  there  must  come  an  hour  of  reflection 
to  every  "free  spirit"  (granted  that  he  has  had  previ- 
ously an  hour  of  thoughtlessness),  just  as  one  came  once 
to  the  same  Buddha:  "Narrowly  cramped,"  he  reflected, 
"is  life  in  the  house;  it  is  a  place  of  uncleanness;  freedom 
is  found  in  leaving  the  house."  Because  he  thought  like 
this,  he  left  the  house.  So  many  bridges  to  independence 
are  shown  in  the  ascetic  ideal,  that  the  philosopher  can- 
not refrain  from  exultation  and  clapping  of  hands  when 
he  hears  the  history  of  all  those  resolute  ones,  who  on  one 
day  uttered  a  nay  to  all  servitude  and  went  into  some 
desert;  even  granting  that  they  were  only  strong  asses, 
and  the  absolute  opposite  of  strong  minds.  What,  then, 
does  the  ascetic  ideal  mean  in  a  philosopher?  This  is  my 
answer — it  will  have  been  guessed  long  ago:  when  he  sees 
this  ideal  the  philosopher  smiles  because  he  sees  therein 
an  optimum  of  the  conditions  of  the  highest  and  boldest 
intellectuality;  he  does  not  thereby  deny  '"existence,"  he 
rather  affirms  thereby  his  existence  and  only  his  existence, 
and  this  perhaps  to  the  point  of  not  being  far  off  the 
blasphemous  wish,  pereat  mundus,  fiat  philosophia,  fiat 
pJrilosophus,  fiaml  .  .  . 

8. 

These  philosophers,  you  see,  are  by  no  means  uncor- 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  109 

rupted  witnesses  and  judges  of  the  value  of  the  ascetic 
ideal.  They  think  of  themselves — what  is  the  "saint"  to 
them?  They  think  of  that  which  to  them  personally  is 
most  indispensable;  of  freedom  from  compulsion,  disturb- 
ance, noise;  freedom  from  business,  duties,  cares;  of  a 
clear  head;  of  the  dance,  spring,  and  flight  of  thoughts;  of 
good  air — rare,  clear,  free,  dry,  as  is  the  air  on  the 
heights,  in  which  every  animal  creature  becomes  more  in- 
tellectual and  gains  wings;  they  think  of  peace  in  every 
cellar;  all  the  hounds  neatly  chained;  no  baying  of  enmity 
and  uncouth  rancour;  no  remorse  of  wounded  ambition; 
quiet  and  submissive  internal  organs,  busy  as  mills,  but 
unnoticed;  the  heart  alien,  transcendent,  future,  posthu- 
mous— to  summarise,  they  mean  by  the  ascetic  ideal  the 
joyous  asceticism  of  a  deified  and  newly  fledged  animal, 
sweeping  over  life  rather  than  resting.  We  know  what 
are  the  three  great  catch- words  of  the  ascetic  ideal:  pov- 
erty, humility,  chastity;  and  now  just  look  closely  at  the 
life  of  all  the  great  fruitful  inventive  spirits — you  will 
always  find  again  and  again  these  three  qualities  up  to  a 
certain  extent.  Not  for  a  minute,  as  is  self-evident,  as 
though,  perchance,  they  were  part  of  their  virtues — what 
has  this  type  of  man  to  do  with  virtues — but  as  the  most 
essential  and  natural  conditions  of  their  best  existence, 
their  finest  fruitfulness.  In  this  connection  it  is  quite  pos- 
sible that  their  predominant  intellectualism  had  first  to 
curb  an  unruly  and  irritable  pride,  or  an  insolent  sensual- 
ism, or  that  it  had  all  its  work  cut  out  to  maintain  its 
wish  for  the  "desert"  against  perhaps  an  inclination  to 
luxury  and  dilettantism,  or  similarly  against  an  extrava- 
gant liberality  of  heart  and  hand.    But  their  intellect  did 


no  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

effect  all  this,  simply  because  it  was  the  dominant  instinct, 
which  carried  through  its  orders  in  the  case  of  all  the 
other  instincts.  It  effects  it  still:  if  it  ceased  to  do  so,  it 
■would  simply  not  be  dominant.  But  there  is  not  one  iota 
of  "virtue"  in  all  this.  Further,  the  desert,  of  which  I 
just  spoke,  in  which  the  strong,  independent,  and  well- 
equipped  spirits  retreat  into  their  hermitage — oh,  how 
different  is  it  from  the  cultured  classes'  dream  of  a  desert! 
In  certain  cases,  in  fact,  the  cultured  classes  themselves 
are  the  desert.  And  it  is  certain  that  all  the  actors  of 
the  intellect  would  not  endure  this  desert  for  a  minute. 
It  is  nothing  like  romantic  and  Syrian  enough  for  them, 
nothing  like  enough  of  a  stage  desert!  Here  as  well  there 
are  plenty  of  asses,  but  at  this  point  the  resemblance 
ceases.  But  a  desert  nowadays  is  something  like  this — 
perhaps  a  deliberate  obscurity;  a  getting-out-of  the  way 
of  one's  self;  a  fear  of  noise,  admiration,  papers,  influence; 
a  little  office,  a  daily  task,  something  that  hides  rather 
than  brings  to  light;  sometimes  associating  with  harmless, 
cheerful  beasts  and  fowls,  the  sight  of  which  refreshes;  a 
mountain  for  company,  but  not  a  dead  one,  one  with  eyes 
(that  is,  with  lakes) ;  in  certain  cases  even  a  room  in  a 
crowded  hotel  where  one  can  reckon  on  not  being  recog- 
nised, and  on  being  able  to  talk  with  impunity  to  every 
one:  here  is  the  desert — oh,  it  is  lonely  enough,  believe 
me!  I  grant  that  when  Heracleitus  retreated  to  the  courts 
and  cloisters  of  the  colossal  temple  of  Artemis,  that 
"wilderness"  was  worthier;  why  do  we  lack  such  temples? 
(perchance  we  do  not  lack  them:  I  just  think  of  my 
splendid  study  in  the  Piazza  di  San  Marco,  in  spring,  of 
course,  and  in  the  morning,  between  ten  and  twelve). 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  in 

But  that  which  Heracleitus  shunned  is  still  just  what  we 
too  avoid  nowadays:  the  noise  and  democratic  babble  of 
the  Ephesians,  their  politics,  their  news  from  the  "empire" 
(I  mean,  of  course,  Persia),  their  market-trade  in  "the 
things  of  to-day" — for  there  is  one  thing  from  which  we 
philosophers  especially  need  a  rest — from  the  things  of 
"to-day."  We  honour  the  silent,  the  cold,  the  noble,  the 
far,  the  past,  everything,  in  fact,  at  the  sight  of  which 
the  soul  is  not  bound  to  brace  itself  up  and  defend  itself 
— something  with  which  one  can  speak  without  speaking 
aloud.  Just  listen  now  to  the  tone  a  spirit  has  when  it 
speaks;  every  spirit  has  its  own  tone  and  loves  its  own 
tone.  That  thing  yonder,  for  instance,  is  bound  to  be  an 
agitator,  that  is,  a  hollow  head,  a  hollow  mug:  whatever 
may  go  into  him,  everything  comes  back  from  him  dull 
and  thick,  heavy  with  the  echo  of  the  great  void.  That 
spirit  yonder  nearly  always  speaks  hoarse:  has  he,  per- 
chance, thought  himself  hoarse?  It  may  be  so — ask  the 
physiologists — but  he  who  thinks  in  words,  thinks  as  a 
speaker  and  not  as  a  thinker  (it  shows  that  he  does  not 
think  of  objects  or  think  objectively,  but  only  of  his  rela- 
tions with  objects — that,  in  point  of  fact,  he  only  thinks 
of  himself  and  his  audience).  This  third  one  speaks 
aggressively,  he  comes  too  near  our  body,  his  breath 
blows  on  us — we  shut  our  mouth  involuntarily,  although 
he  speaks  to  us  through  a  book:  the  tone  of  his  style 
supplies  the  reason — he  has  no  time,  he  has  small  faith 
in  himself,  he  finds  expression  now  or  never.  But  a  spirit 
who  is  sure  of  himself  speaks  softly;  he  seeks  secrecy,  he 
lets  himself  be  awaited.  A  philosopher  is  recognised  by 
the  fact  that  he  shuns  three  brilliant  and  noisy  things — 


ii2     THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

fame,  princes,  and  women:  which  is  not  to  say  that  they 
do  not  come  to  him.  He  shuns  every  glaring  light: 
therefore  he  shuns  his  time  and  its  "daylight."  Therein 
he  is  as  a  shadow;  the  deeper  sinks  the  sun,  the  greater 
grows  the  shadow.  As  for  his  humility,  he  endures,  as  he 
endures  darkness,  a  certain  dependence  and  obscurity: 
further,  he  is  afraid  of  the  shock  of  lightning,  he  shudders 
at  the  insecurity  of  a  tree  which  is  too  isolated  and  too 
exposed,  on  which  every  storm  vents  its  temper,  every 
temper  its  storm.  His  "maternal"  instinct,  his  secret  love 
for  that  which  grows  in  him,  guides  him  into  states  where 
he  is  relieved  from  the  necessity  of  taking  care  of  himself, 
in  the  same  way  in  which  the  "mother"  instinct  in  woman 
has  thoroughly  maintained  up  to  the  present  woman's 
dependent  position.  After  all,  they  demand  little  enough, 
do  these  philosophers,  their  favourite  motto  is,  "He  who 
possesses  is  possessed."  All  this  is  not,  as  I  must  say 
again  and  again,  to  be  attributed  to  a  virtue,  to  a  meri- 
torious wish  for  moderation  and  simplicity:  but  because 
their  supreme  lord  so  demands  of  them,  demands  wisely 
and  inexorably;  their  lord  who  is  eager  only  for  one  thing, 
for  which  alone  he  musters,  and  for  which  alone  he  hoards 
everything — time,  strength,  love,  interest.  This  kind  of 
man  likes  not  to  be  disturbed  by  enmity,  he  likes  not  to 
be  disturbed  by  friendship,  it  is  a  type  which  forgets  or 
despises  easily.  It  strikes  him  as  bad  form  to  play  the 
martyr,  "to  suffer  for  truth" — he  leaves  all  that  to  the 
ambitious  and  to  the  stage-heroes  of  the  intellect,  and  to 
all  those,  in  fact,  who  have  time  enough  for  such  luxuries 
(they  themselves,  the  philosophers,  have  something  to  do 
for  truth).    They  make  a  sparing  use  of  big  words;  they 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  113 

are  said  to  be  adverse  to  the  word  "truth"  itself:  it  has  a 
"high  falutin'  "  ring.  Finally,  as  far  as  the  chastity  ot 
philosophers  is  concerned,  the  fruitfulness  of  this  type  of 
mind  is  manifestly  in  another  sphere  than  that  of  chil- 
dren; perchance  in  some  other  sphere,  too,  they  have  the 
survival  of  their  name,  their  little  immortality  (philoso- 
phers in  ancient  India  would  express  themselves  with  still 
greater  boldness:  "Of  what  use  is  posterity  to  him  whose 
soul  is  the  world?").  In  this  attitude  there  is  not  a  trace 
of  chastity,  by  reason  of  any  ascetic  scruple  or  hatred  of 
the  flesh,  any  more  than  it  is  chastity  for  an  athlete  or  a 
jockey  to  abstain  from  women;  it  is  rather  the  will  of  the 
dominant  instinct,  at  any  rate,  during  the  period  of  their 
advanced  philosophic  pregnancy.  Every  artist  knows  the 
harm  done  by  sexual  intercourse  on  occasions  of  great 
mental  strain  and  preparation;  as  far  as  the  strongest 
artists  and  those  with  the  surest  instincts  are  concerned, 
this  is  not  necessarily  a  case  of  experience — hard  experi- 
ence— but  it  is  simply  their  "maternal"  instinct  which,  in 
order  to  benefit  the  growing  work,  disposes  recklessly 
(beyond  all  its  normal  stocks  and  supplies)  of  the  vigour 
of  its  animal  life;  the  greater  power  then  absorbs  the 
lesser.  Let  us  now  apply  this  interpretation  to  gauge  cor- 
rectly the  case  of  Schopenhauer,  which  we  have  already 
mentioned:  in  his  case,  the  sight  of  the  beautiful  acted 
manifestly  like  a  resolving  irritant  on  the  chief  power  of 
his  nature  (the  power  of  contemplation  and  of  intense 
penetration) ;  so  that  this  strength  exploded  and  became 
suddenly  master  of  his  consciousness.  But  this  by  no 
means  excludes  the  possibility  of  that  particular  sweet- 
ness and  fulness,  which  is  peculiar  to  the  aesthetic  state, 


H4  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

springing  directly  from  the  ingredient  of  sensuality  (just 
as  that  "idealism"  which  is  peculiar  to  girls  at  puberty 
originates  in  the  same  source) — it  may  be,  consequently, 
that  sensuality  is  not  removed  by  the  approach  of  the 
aesthetic  state,  as  Schopenhauer  believed,  but  merely  be- 
comes transfigured,  and  ceases  to  enter  into  the  conscious- 
ness as  sexual  excitement.  (I  shall  return  once  again  to 
this  point  in  connection  with  the  more  delicate  problems 
of  the  physiology  of  the  (esthetic,  a  subject  which  up  to 
the  present  has  been  singularly  untouched  and  uneluci- 
dated.) 


A  certain  asceticism,  a  grimly  gay  whole-hearted  renun- 
ciation, is,  as  we  have  seen,  one  of  the  most  favourable 
conditions  for  the  highest  intellectualism,  and,  conse- 
quently, for  the  most  natural  corollaries  of  such  intel- 
lectualism: we  shall  therefore  be  proof  against  any  sur- 
prise at  the  philosophers  in  particular  always  treating  the 
ascetic  ideal  with  a  certain  amount  of  predilection.  A 
serious  historical  investigation  shows  the  bond  between 
the  ascetic  ideal  and  philosophy  to  be  still  much  tighter 
and  still  much  stronger.  It  may  be  said  that  it  was  only 
in  the  leading  strings  of  this  ideal  that  philosophy  really 
learnt  to  make  its  first  steps  and  baby  paces — alas  how 
clumsily,  alas  how  crossly,  alas  how  ready  to  tumble  down 
and  lie  on  its  stomach  was  this  shy  little  darling  of  a 
brat  with  its  bandy  legs!  The  early  history  of  philosophy 
is  like  that  of  all  good  things; — for  a  long  time  they  had 
not  the  courage  to  be  themselves,  they  kept  always  look- 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  115 

ing  round  to  see  if  no  one  would  come  to  their  help;  fur- 
ther, they  were  afraid  of  all  who  looked  at  them.  Just 
enumerate  in  order  the  particular  tendencies  and  virtues 
of  the  philosopher— his  tendency  to  doubt,  his  tendency 
to  deny,  his  tendency  to  wait  (to  be  "ephectic"),  his 
tendency  to  analyse,  search,  explore,  dare,  his  tendency  to 
compare  and  to  equalise,  his  will  to  be  neutral  and  ob- 
jective, his  will  for  everything  which  is  "sine  ira  et 
studio":  has  it  yet  been  realised  that  for  quite  a  lengthy 
period  these  tendencies  went  counter  to  the  first  claims  of 
morality  and  conscience?  (To  say  nothing  at  all  of 
Reason,  which  even  Luther  chose  to  call  Frau  Kliiglin* 
the  sly  whore.)  Has  it  been  yet  appreciated  that  a  phi- 
losopher, in  the  event  of  his  arriving  at  self-consciousness, 
must  needs  feel  himself  an  incarnate  "nitimur  in  vetitum," 
— and  consequently  guard  himself  against  "his  own  sen- 
sations," against  self -consciousness?  It  is,  I  repeat,  just 
the  same  with  all  good  things,  on  which  we  now  pride 
ourselves;  even  judged  by  the  standard  of  the  ancient 
Greeks,  our  whole  modern  life,  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  weak- 
ness, but  power  and  the  consciousness  of  power,  appears 
pure  "Hybris"  and  godlessness:  for  the  things  which  are 
the  very  reverse  of  those  which  we  honour  to-day,  have 
had  for  a  long  time  conscience  on  their  side,  and  God  as 
their  guardian.  "Hybris"  is  our  whole  attitude  to  nature 
nowadays,  our  violation  of  nature  with  the  help  of  ma- 
chinery, and  all  the  unscrupulous  ingenuity  of  our  scien- 
tists and  engineers.  "Hybris"  is  our  attitude  to  God,  that 
is,  to  some  alleged  teleological  and  ethical  spider  behind 
the  meshes  of  the  great  trap  of  the  causal  web.     Like 


*  Mistress  Sly. — Tr. 


n6  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

Charles  the  Bold  in  his  war  with  Louis  the  Eleventh,  we 
may  say,  "je  combats  Vunivcrsclle  araignce,\  "Hybris"  is 
our  attitude  to  ourselves — for  we  experiment  with  our- 
selves in  a  way  that  we  would  not  allow  with  any  animal, 
and  with  pleasure  and  curiosity  open  our  soul  in  our 
living  body:  what  matters  now  to  us  the  "salvation"  of  the 
soul?  We  heal  ourselves  afterwards:  being  ill  is  instruc- 
tive, we  doubt  it  not,  even  more  instructive  than  being 
well — inoculators  of  disease  seem  to  us  to-day  even  more 
necessary  than  any  medicine-men  and  "saviours."  There 
is  no  doubt  we  do  violence  to  ourselves  nowaday.-,  we 
crackers  of  the  soul's  kernel,  we  incarnate  riddles,  who  are 
ever  asking  riddles,  as  though  life  were  naught  else  than 
the  cracking  of  a  nut;  and  even  thereby  must  we  neces- 
sarily become  day  by  day  more  and  more  worthy  to  be 
asked  questions  and  worthy  to  ask  them,  even  thereby 
do  we  perchance  also  become  worthier  to — live? 

.  .  .  All  good  things  were  once  bad  thins;?:  from 
every  original  sin  has  grown  an  original  virtue.  Marriage, 
for  example,  seemed  for  a  long  time  a  sin  against  the 
rights  of  the  community ;  a  man  formerly  paid  a  fine  for 
the  insolence  of  claiming  one  woman  to  himself  (to  this 
phase  belongs,  for  instance,  the  jus  priv.  to-day 

still  in  Cambodia  the  privilege  of  the  priest,  that  guardian 
of  the  "good  old  customs"). 

The  soft,  benevolent,  yielding,  sympathetic  feelings — 
eventually  valued  so  highly  that  they  almost  became 
"intrinsic  values,"  were  for  a  very  long  time  actually 
despised  by  their  possessors:  gentleness  was  then  a  sub- 
ject for  shame,  just  as  hardness  is  now  (compare  B(  yond 
Good  and  Evil,  Aph.  260).    The  submission  to  law:  oh, 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  117 

with  what  qualms  of  conscience  was  it  that  the  noble  races 
throughout  the  world  renounced  the  vendetta  and  gave 
the  law  power  over  themselves!  Law  was  long  a  vetitum, 
a  blasphemy,  an  innovation;  it  was  introduced  with  force 
like  a  force,  to  which  men  only  submitted  with  a  sense  of 
personal  shame.  Every  tiny  step  forward  in  the  world 
was  formerly  made  at  the  cost  of  mental  and  physical 
torture.  Nowadays  the  whole  of  this  point  of  view — 
"that  not  only  stepping  forward,  nay,  stepping  at  all, 
movement,  change,  all  needed  their  countless  martyrs," 
rings  in  our  ears  quite  strangely.  I  have  put  it  forward 
in  the  Dawn  of  Day,  Aph.  18.  "Nothing  is  purchased 
more  dearly,"  says  the  same  book  a  little  later,  "than  the 
modicum  of  human  reason  and  freedom  which  is  now 
our  pride.  But  that  pride  is  the  reason  why  it  is  now 
almost  impossible  for  us  to  feel  in  sympathy  with  those 
immense  periods  of  the  'Morality  of  Custom,'  which  lie 
at  the  beginning  of  the  'world's  history,'  constituting  as 
they  do  the  real  decisive  historical  principle  which  has 
fixed  the  character  of  humanity;  those  periods,  I  repeat, 
when  throughout  the  world  suffering  passed  for  virtue, 
cruelty  for  virtue,  deceit  for  virtue,  revenge  for  virtue, 
repudiation  of  the  reason  for  virtue;  and  when,  con- 
versely, well-being  passed  current  for  danger,  the  desire 
for  knowledge  for  danger,  pity  for  danger,  peace  for  dan- 
ger, being  pitied  for  shame,  work  for  shame,  madness  for 
divinity,  and  change  for  immorality  and  incarnate  cor- 
ruption!" 

10. 

There  is  in  the  same  book,  Aph.  12,  an  explanation 


n8  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

of  the  burden  of  unpopularity  under  which  the  earliest 
race  of  contemplative  men  had  to  live — despised  almost 
as  widely  as  they  were  first  feared!  Contemplation  first 
appeared  on  earth  in  a  disguised  shape,  in  an  ambiguous 
form,  with  an  evil  heart  and  often  with  an  uneasy  head: 
there  is  no  doubt  about  it.  The  inactive,  brooding,  un- 
warlike  element  in  the  instincts  of  contemplative  men 
long  invested  them  with  a  cloud  of  suspicion:  the  only 
way  to  combat  this  was  to  excite  a  definite  fear.  And 
the  old  Brahmans,  for  example,  knew  to  a  nicety  how  to 
do  this!  The  oldest  philosophers  were  well  versed  in 
giving  to  their  very  existence  and  appearance,  meaning, 
firmness,  background,  by  reason  whereof  men  learnt  to 
fear  them;  considered  more  precisely,  they  did  this  from 
an  even  more  fundamental  need,  the  need  of  inspiring  in 
themselves  fear  and  self-reverence.  For  they  found  even 
in  their  own  souls  all  the  valuations  turned  against  them- 
selves; they  had  to  fight  down  every  kind  of  suspicion 
and  antagonism  against  "the  philosophic  element  in  them- 
selves." Being  men  of  a  terrible  age,  they  did  this  with 
terrible  means:  cruelty  to  themselves,  ingenious  self- 
mortification — this  was  the  chief  method  of  these  ambi- 
tious hermits  and  intellectual  revolutionaries,  who  were 
obliged  to  force  down  the  gods  and  the  traditions  of  their 
own  soul,  so  as  to  enable  themselves  to  believe  in  their 
own  revolution.  I  remember  the  famous  story  of  the 
King  Vicvamitra,  who,  as  the  result  of  a  thousand  years 
of  self-martyrdom,  reached  such  a  consciousness  of  power 
and  such  a  confidence  in  himself  that  he  undertook  to 
build  a  new  heaven:  the  sinister  symbol  of  the  oldest 
and  newest  history  of  philosophy  in  the  whole  world. 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  119 

Every  one  who  has  ever  built  anywhere  a  "new  heaven" 
first  found  the  power  thereto  in  his  own  hell.  .  .  .  Let  us 
compress  the  facts  into  a  short  formula.  The  philosophic 
spirit  had,  in  order  to  be  possible  to  any  extent  at  all,  to 
masquerade  and  disguise  itself  as  one  of  the  previously 
fixed  types  of  the  contemplative  man,  to  disguise  itself 
as  priest,  wizard,  soothsayer,  as  a  religious  man  generally: 
the  ascetic  ideal  has  for  a  long  time  served  the  philoso- 
pher as  a  superficial  form,  as  a  condition  which  enabled 
him  to  exist.  ...  To  be  able  to  be  a  philosopher  he  had 
to  exemplify  the  ideal;  to  exemplify  it,  he  was  bound  to 
believe  in  it.  The  peculiarly  etherealised  abstraction  of 
philosophers,  with  their  negation  of  the  world,  their  enmity 
to  life,  their  disbelief  in  the  senses,  which  has  been  main- 
tained up  to  the  most  recent  time,  and  has  almost  thereby 
come  to  be  accepted  as  the  ideal  philosophic  attitude — 
this  abstraction  is  the  result  of  those  enforced  conditions 
under  which  philosophy  came  into  existence,  and  con- 
tinued to  exist;  inasmuch  as  for  quite  a  very  long  time 
philosophy  would  have  been  absolutely  impossible  in  the 
world  without  an  ascetic  cloak  and  dress,  without  an 
ascetic  self-misunderstanding.  Expressed  plainly  and 
palpably,  the  ascetic  priest  has  taken  the  repulsive  and 
sinister  form  of  the  caterpillar,  beneath  which  and  behind 
which  alone  philosophy  could  live  and  slink  about.  .  .  . 
Has  all  that  really  changed?  Has  that  flamboyant 
and  dangerous  winged  creature,  that  "spirit"  which  that 
caterpillar  concealed  within  itself,  has  it,  I  say,  thanks  to 
a  sunnier,  warmer,  lighter  world,  really  and  finally  flung 
off  its  hood  and  escaped  into  the  light?  Can  we  to-day 
point  to  enough  pride,  enough  daring,  enough  courage, 


120  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

enough  self-confidence,  enough  mental  will,  enough  will 
for  responsibility,  enough  freedom  of  the  will,  to  enable 
the  philosopher  to  be  now  in  the  world  really — possible? 


ii. 


And  now,  after  we  have  caught  sight  of  the  ascetic 
priest,  let  us  tackle  our  problem.  What  is  the  meaning 
of  the  ascetic  ideal?  It  now  first  becomes  serious — 
vitally  serious.  We  are  now  confronted  with  the  real 
representatives  oj  the  serious.  "What  is  the  meaning  of 
all  seriousness?"  This  even  more  radical  question  is  per- 
chance already  on  the  tip  of  our  tongue:  a  question, 
fairly,  for  physiologists,  but  which  we  for  the  time  being 
skip.  In  that  ideal  the  ascetic  priest  finds  not  only  his 
faith,  but  also  his  will,  his  power,  his  interest.  His  right 
to  existence  stands  and  falls  with  that  ideal.  What  won- 
der that  we  here  run  up  against  a  terrible  opponent  (on 
the  supposition,  of  course,  that  we  are  the  opponents  of 
that  ideal),  an  opponent  fighting  for  his  life  against  those 
who  repudiate  that  ideal!  ...  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
from  the  outset  improbable  that  such  a  biased  attitude 
towards  our  problem  will  do  him  any  particular  good; 
the  ascetic  priest  himself  will  scarcely  prove  the  happiest 
champion  of  his  own  ideal  (on  the  same  principle  on 
which  a  woman  usually  fails  when  she  wishes  to  champion 
"woman") — let  alone  proving  the  most  objective  critic 
and  judge  of  the  controversy  now  raised.  We  shall  there- 
fore— so  much  is  already  obvious — rather  have  actually 
to  help  him  to  defend  himself  properly  against  ourselves, 
than  we  shall  have  to  fear  being  too  well  beaten  by  him. 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  121 

The  idea,  which  is  the  subject  of  this  dispute,  is  the 
value  of  our  life  from  the  standpoint  of  the  ascetic  priests: 
this  life,  then  (together  with  the  whole  of  which  it  is  a 
part,  "Nature,"  "the  world,"  the  whole  sphere  of  becom- 
ing and  passing  away),  is  placed  by  them  in  relation  to 
an  existence  of  quite  another  character,  which  it  excludes 
and  to  which  it  is  opposed,  unless  it  deny  its  own  self: 
in  this  case,  the  case  of  an  ascetic  life,  life  is  taken  as  a 
bridge  to  another  existence.  The  ascetic  treats  life  as  a 
maze,  in  which  one  must  walk  backwards  till  one  comes 
to  the  place  where  it  starts;  or  he  treats  it  as  an  error 
which  one  may,  nay  must,  refute  by  action:  for  he  de- 
mands that  he  should  be  followed;  he  enforces,  where  he 
can,  his  valuation  of  existence.  What  does  this  mean? 
Such  a  monstrous  valuation  is  not  an  exceptional  case, 
or  a  curiosity  recorded  in  human  history:  it  is  one  of  the 
most  general  and  persistent  facts  that  there  are.  The 
reading  from  the  vantage  of  a  distant  star  of  the  capital 
letters  of  our  earthly  life,  would  perchance  lead  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  earth  was  the  especially  ascetic  planet, 
a  den  of  discontented,  arrogant,  and  repulsive  creatures, 
who  never  got  rid  of  a  deep  disgust  of  themselves,  of  the 
world,  of  all  life,  and  did  themselves  as  much  hurt  as 
possible  out  of  pleasure  in  hurting — presumably  their  one 
and  only  pleasure.  Let  us  consider  how  regularly,  how 
universally,  how  practically  at  every  single  period  the 
ascetic  priest  puts  in  his  appearance:  he  belongs  to  no 
particular  race;  he  thrives  everywhere;  he  grows  out  of 
all  classes.  Not  that  he  perhaps  bred  this  valuation  by 
heredity  and  propagated  it — the  contrary  is  the  case. 
It  must  be  a  necessity  of  the  first  order  which  makes 


122  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

this  species,  hostile,  as  it  is,  to  life,  always  grow  again 
and  always  thrive  again. — Life  itself  must  certainly  have 
an  interest  in  the  continuance  of  such  a  type  of  self-con- 
tradiction. For  an  ascetic  life  is  a  self-contradiction: 
here  rules  resentment  without  parallel,  the  resentment  of 
an  insatiate  instinct  and  ambition,  that  would  be  master, 
not  over  some  element  in  life,  but  over  life  itself,  over 
life's  deepest,  strongest,  innermost  conditions;  here  is  an 
attempt  made  to  utilise  power  to  dam  the  sources  of 
power;  here  does  the  green  eye  of  jealousy  tum  even 
against  physiological  well-being,  especially  against  the 
expression  of  such  well-being,  beauty,  joy,  while  a  sense 
of  pleasure  is  experienced  and  sought  in  abortion,  in 
decay,  in  pain,  in  misfortune,  in  ugliness,  in  voluntary 
punishment,  in  the  exercising,  flagellation,  and  sacrifice  of 
the  self.  All  this  is  in  the  highest  degree  paradoxical: 
we  are  here  confronted  with  a  rift  that  wills  itself  to  be  a 
rift,  which  enjoys  itself  in  this  very  suffering,  and  even 
becomes  more  and  more  certain  of  itself,  more  and  more 
triumphant,  in  proportion  as  its  own  presupposition, 
physiological  vitality,  decreases.  "The  triumph  just  in 
the  supreme  agony":  under  this  extravagant  emblem  did 
the  ascetic  ideal  fight  from  of  old;  in  this  mystery  of 
seduction,  in  this  picture  of  rapture  and  torture,  it  recog- 
nised its  brightest  light,  its  salvation,  its  final  victory. 
Crux,  nux,  lux — it  has  all  these  three  in  one. 

12. 

Granted  that  such  an  incarnate  will  for  contradiction 
and  unnaturalness  is  induced  to  philosophise;  on  what 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  123 

will  it  vent  its  pet  caprice?  On  that  which  has  been  felt 
with  the  greatest  certainty  to  be  true,  to  be  real;  it  will 
look  for  error  in  those  very  places  where  the  life  instinct 
fixes  truth  with  the  greatest  positiveness.  It  will,  for 
instance,  after  the  example  of  the  ascetics  of  the  Vedanta 
Philosophy,  reduce  matter  to  an  illusion,  and  similarly 
treat  pain,  multiplicity,  the  whole  logical  contrast  of 
"Subject"  and  "Object" — errors,  nothing  but  errors!  To 
renounce  the  belief  in  one's  own  ego,  to  deny  to  one's  self 
one's  own  "reality" — what  a  triumph!  and  here  already 
we  have  a  much  higher  kind  of  triumph,  which  is  not 
merely  a  triumph  over  the  senses,  over  the  palpable,  but 
an  infliction  of  violence  and  cruelty  on  reason;  and  this 
ecstasy  culminates  in  the  ascetic  self-contempt,  the  ascetic 
scorn  of  one's  own  reason  making  this  decree:  there  is 
a  domain  of  truth  and  of  life,  but  reason  is  specially 
excluded  therefrom.  ...  By  the  bye,  even  in  the  Kantian 
idea  of  "the  intelligible  character  of  things"  there  remains 
a  trace  of  that  schism,  so  dear  to  the  heart  of  the  ascetic, 
that  schism  which  likes  to  turn  reason  against  reason; 
in  fact,  "intelligible  character"  means  in  Kant  a  kind  of 
quality  in  things  of  which  the  intellect  comprehends  so 
much,  that  for  it,  the  intellect,  it  is  absolutely  incom- 
prehensible. After  all,  let  us,  in  our  character  of  know- 
ers,  not  be  ungrateful  towards  such  determined  reversals 
of  the  ordinary  perspectives  and  values,  with  which  the 
mind  had  for  too  long  raged  against  itself  with  an  ap- 
parently futile  sacrilege!  In  the  same  way  the  very 
seeing  of  another  vista,  the  very  wishing  to  see  another 
vista,  is  no  little  training  and  preparation  of  the  intellect 
for  its  eternal  "Objectivity" — objectivity   being  under- 


i24  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

stood  not  as  "contemplation  without  interest"  (for  that  is 
inconceivable  and  nonsensical),  but  as  the  ability  to  have 
the  pros  and  cons  in  one's  power  and  to  switch  them  on 
and  off,  so  as  to  get  to  know  how  to  utilise,  for  the 
advancement  of  knowledge,  the  difference  in  the  per- 
spective and  in  the  emotional  interpretations.  But  let 
us,  forsooth,  my  philosophic  colleagues,  henceforward 
guard  ourselves  more  carefully  against  this  mythology  of 
dangerous  ancient  ideas,  which  has  set  up  a  "pure,  will- 
less,  painless,  timeless  subject  of  knowledge";  let  us  guard 
ourselves  from  the  tentacles  of  such  contradictory  ideas 
as  "pure  reason,"  "absolute  spirituality,"  "knowledge-in- 
itself": — in  these  theories  an  eye  that  cannot  be  thought 
of  is  required  to  think,  an  eye  which  ex  hypothesi  has  no 
direction  at  all,  an  eye  in  which  the  active  and  inter- 
preting functions  are  cramped,  are  absent;  those  func- 
tions, I  say,  by  means  of  which  "abstract"  seeing  first 
became  seeing  something;  in  these  theories  consequently 
the  absurd  and  the  nonsensical  is  always  demanded  of 
the  eye.  There  is  only  a  seeing  from  a  perspective,  only 
a  "knowing"  from  a  perspective,  and  the  more  emotions 
we  express  over  a  thing,  the  more  eyes,  different  eyes, 
we  train  on  the  same  thing,  the  more  complete  will  be 
our  "idea"  of  that  thing,  our  "objectivity."  But  the 
elimination  of  the  will  altogether,  the  switching  off  of 
the  emotions  all  and  sundry,  granted  that  we  could  do  so, 
vvhat!  would  not  that  be  called  intellectual  castration? 

13- 
But  let  us  turn  back.     Such  a  self-contradiction,  as 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  125 

apparently  manifests  itself  among  the  ascetics,  "Life 
turned  against  Life,"  is — so  much  is  absolutely  obvious 
— from  the  physiological  and  not  now  from  the  psycho- 
logical standpoint,  simply  nonsense.  It  can  only  be  an 
apparent  contradiction;  it  must  be  a  kind  of  provisional 
expression,  an  explanation,  a  formula,  an  adjustment,  a 
psychological  misunderstanding  of  something,  whose  real 
nature  could  not  be  understood  for  a  long  time,  and 
whose  real  essence  could  not  be  described;  a  mere  word 
jammed  into  an  old  gap  of  human  knowledge.  To  put 
briefly  the  facts  against  its  being  real:  the  ascetic  ideal 
springs  from  the  prophylactic  and  self-preservative  in- 
stincts which  mark  a  decadent  life,  which  seeks  by  every 
means  in  its  power  to  maintain  its  position  and  fight  for 
its  existence;  it  points  to  a  partial  physiological  depres- 
sion and  exhaustion,  against  which  the  most  profound  and 
intact  life-instincts  fight  ceaselessly  with  new  weapons 
and  discoveries.  The  ascetic  ideal  is  such  a  weapon:  its 
position  is  consequently  exactly  the  reverse  of  that  which 
the  worshippers  of  the  ideal  imagine — life  struggles  in  it 
and  through  it  with  death  and  against  death;  the  ascetic 
ideal  is  a  dodge  for  the  preservation  of  life.  An  impor- 
tant fact  is  brought  out  in  the  extent  to  which,  as  history 
teaches,  this  ideal  could  rule  and  exercise  power  over 
man,  especially  in  all  those  places  where  the  civilisation 
and  taming  of  man  was  completed:  that  fact  is,  the  dis- 
eased state  of  man  up  to  the  present,  at  any  rate,  of  the 
man  who  has  been  tamed,  the  physiological  struggle  of 
man  with  death  (more  precisely,  with  the  disgust  with 
life,  with  exhaustion,  with  the  wish  for  the  "end").  The 
ascetic  priest  is  the  incarnate  wish  for  an  existence  of 


126  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

another  kind,  an  existence  on  another  plane, — he  is,  in 
fact,  the  highest  point  of  this  wish,  its  official  ecstasy 
and  passion:  but  it  is  the  very  power  of  this  wish  which 
is  the  fetter  that  binds  him  here;  it  is  just  that  which 
makes  him  into  a  tool  that  must  labour  to  create  more 
favourable  conditions  for  earthly  existence,  for  existence 
on  the  human  plane — it  is  with  this  very  power  that  he 
keeps  the  whole  herd  of  failures,  distortions,  abortions, 
unfortunates,  sufferers  from  themselves  of  every  kind,  fast 
to  existence,  while  he  as  the  herdsman  goes  instinctively 
on  in  front.  You  understand  me  already:  this  ascetic 
priest,  this  apparent  enemy  of  life,  this  denier — he  actu- 
ally belongs  to  the  really  great  conservative  and  affirmative 
forces  of  life.  .  .  .  What  does  it  come  from,  this  diseased 
state?  For  man  is  more  diseased,  more  uncertain,  more 
changeable,  more  unstable  than  any  other  animal,  there 
is  no  doubt  of  it — he  is  the  diseased  animal :  what  does  it 
spring  from?  Certainly  he  has  also  dared,  innovated, 
braved  more,  challenged  fate  more  than  all  the  other  ani- 
mals put  together;  he,  the  great  experimenter  with  him- 
self, the  unsatisfied,  the  insatiate,  who  struggles  for  the 
supreme  mastery  with  beast,  Nature,  and  gods,  he,  the 
as  yet  ever  uncompelled,  the  ever  future,  who  finds  no 
more  any  rest  from  his  own  aggressive  strength,  goaded 
inexorably  on  by  the  spur  of  the  future  dug  into  the  flesh 
of  the  present: — how  should  not  so  brave  and  rich  an 
animal  also  be  the  most  endangered,  the  animal  with  the 
longest  and  deepest  sickness  among  all  sick  animals? 
.  .  .  Man  is  sick  of  it,  oft  enough  there  are  whole  epi- 
demics of  this  satiety  (as  about  1348,  the  time  of  the 
Dance  of  Death) :  but  even  this  very  nausea,  this  tired- 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  127 

ness,  this  disgust  with  himself,  all  this  is  discharged  from 
him  with  such  force  that  it  is  immediately  made  into  a 
new  fetter.  His  "nay,"  which  he  utters  to  life,  brings 
to  light  as  though  by  magic  an  abundance  of  graceful 
"yeas";  even  when  he  wounds  himself,  this  master  of 
destruction,  of  self-destruction,  it  is  subsequently  the 
wound  itself  that  forces  him  to  live. 

14. 

The  more  normal  is  this  sickliness  in  man — and  we 
cannot  dispute  this  normality — the  higher  honour  should 
be  paid  to  the  rare  cases  of  psychical  and  physical  pow- 
erfulness,  the  windfalls  of  humanity,  and  the  more  strictly 
should  the  sound  be  guarded  from  that  worst  of  air,  the 
air  of  the  sick-room.  Is  that  done?  The  sick  are  the 
greatest  danger  for  the  healthy;  it  is  not  from  the  strong- 
est that  harm  comes  to  the  strong,  but  from  the  weakest. 
Is  that  known?  Broadly  considered,  it  is  not  for  a  min- 
ute the  fear  of  man,  whose  diminution  should  be  wished 
for;  for  this  fear  forces  the  strong  to  be  strong,  to  be  at 
times  terrible— it  preserves  in  its  integrity  the  sound  type 
of  man.  What  is  to  be  feared,  what  does  work  with  a 
fatality  found  in  no  other  fate,  is  not  the  great  fear  of, 
but  the  great  nausea  with,  man;  and  equally  so  the  great 
pity  for  man.  Supposing  that  both  these  things  were 
one  day  to  espouse  each  other,  then  inevitably  the  maxi- 
mum of  monstrousness  would  immediately  come  into  the 
world — the  "last  will"  of  man,  his  will  for  nothingness, 
Nihilism.  And,  in  sooth,  the  way  is  well  paved  thereto. 
He  who  not  only  has  his  nose  to  smell  with,  but  also  has 


128  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

eves  and  ears,  he  sniffs  almost  wherever  he  goes  to-day 
an  air  something  like  that  of  a  mad-house,  the  air  of  a 
hospital — I  am  speaking,  as  stands  to  reason,  of  the  cul- 
tured areas  of  mankind,  of  every  kind  of  "Europe''  that 
there  is  in  fact  in  the  world.  The  sick  are  the  great 
danger  of  man,  not  the  evil,  not  the  "beasts  of  prey." 
They  who  are  from  the  outset  botched,  oppressed,  broken, 
those  are  they,  the  weakest  are  they,  who  most  under- 
mine the  life  beneath  the  feet  of  man,  who  instil  the  most 
dangerous  venom  and  scepticism  into  our  trust  in  life,  in 
mr.n,  in  ourselves.  Where  shall  we  escape  from  it,  from 
that  covert  look  (from  which  we  carry  away  a  deep 
sadness),  from  that  averted  look  of  him  who  is  misborn 
from  the  beginning,  that  look  which  betrays  what  such  a 
man  says  to  himself — that  look  which  is  a  groan?  "Would 
that  I  were  something  else,"  so  groans  this  look,  "but 
there  is  no  hope.  I  am  what  I  am:  how  could  I  get 
away  from  myself?  And,  verily — /  am  sick  of  myself!" 
On  such  a  soil  of  self-contempt,  a  veritable  swamp  soil, 
grows  that  weed,  that  poisonous  growth,  and  all  so  tiny. 
so  hidden,  so  ignoble,  so  sugary.  Here  teem  the  worms  of 
revenge  and  vindictiveness;  here  the  air  reeks  of  things 
secret  and  unmentionable;  here  is  ever  spun  the  net  of 
the  most  malignant  conspiracy — the  conspiracy  of  the 
sufferers  against  the  sound  and  the  victorious;  here  is  the 
jht  of  the  victorious  hated.  And  what  lying  so  as  not 
to  acknowledge  this  hate  as  hate!  What  a  show  of  big 
words  and  attitudes,  what  an  art  of  "righteous"  calumni- 
ation! These  abortions!  what  a  noble  eloquence  gushes 
from  their  lips!  What  an  amount  of  sugary,  slimy, 
humble  submission  oozes  in  their  eyes!     What  do  they 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  129 

really  want?  At  any  rate  to  represent  righteousness,  love, 
wisdom,  superiority,  that  is  the  ambition  of  these  "low- 
est ones,"  these  sick  ones!  And  how  clever  does  such  an 
ambition  make  them!  You  cannot,  in  fact,  but  admire 
the  counterfeiter  dexterity  with  which  the  stamp  of  virtue, 
even  the  ring,  the  golden  ring  of  virtue,  is  here  imitated. 
They  have  taken  a  lease  of  virtue  absolutely  for  them- 
selves, have  these  weaklings  and  wretched  invalids,  there 
is  no  doubt  of  it;  "We  alone  are  the  good,  the  righteous," 
so  do  they  speak,  "we  alone  are  the  homines  bonce  volun- 
tatis." They  stalk  about  in  our  midst  as  living  re- 
proaches, as  warnings  to  us — as  though  health,  fitness, 
strength,  pride,  the  sensation  of  power,  were  really  vicious 
things  in  themselves,  for  which  one  would  have  some  day 
to  do  penance,  bitter  penance.  Oh,  how  they  themselves 
are  ready  in  their  hearts  to  exact  penance,  how  they  thirst 
after  being  hangmen! 

Among  them  is  an  abundance  of  revengeful  ones  dis- 
guised as  judges,  who  ever  mouth  the  word  righteousness 
like  a  venomous  spittle — with  mouth,  I  say,  always 
pursed,  always  ready  to  spit  at  everything,  which  does 
not  wear  a  discontented  look,  but  is  of  good  cheer  as  it 
goes  on  its  way.  Among  them,  again,  is  that  most  loath- 
some species  of  the  vain,  the  lying  abortions,  who  make  a 
point  of  representing  "beautiful  souls,"  and  perchance 
of  bringing  to  the  market  as  "purity  of  heart"  their  dis- 
torted sensualism  swathed  in  verses  and  other  bandages; 
the  species  of  "self-comforters"  and  masturbators  of  their 
own  souls.  The  sick  man's  will  to  represent  some  form 
or  other  of  superiority,  his  instinct  for  crooked  paths, 
which  lead  to  a  tyranny  over  the  healthy — where  can  it 


130  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

not  be  found,  this  will  to  power  of  the  very  weakest? 
The  sick  woman  especially:  no  one  surpasses  her  in  re- 
finements for  ruling,  oppressing,  tyrannising.  The  sick 
woman,  moreover,  spares  nothing  living,  nothing  dead; 
she  grubs  up  again  the  most  buried  things  (the  Bogos 
say,  "Woman  is  a  hyena").  Look  into  the  background 
of  every  family,  of  every  body,  of  every  community: 
everywhere  the  fight  of  the  sick  against  the  healthy — a 
silent  fight  for  the  most  part  with  minute  poisoned 
powders,  with  pin-pricks,  with  spiteful  grimaces  of  pa- 
tience, but  also  at  times  with  that  diseased  pharisaism 
of  pure  pantomime,  which  plays  for  the  choice  role  of 
"righteous  indignation."  Right  into  the  hallowed  cham- 
bers of  knowledge  can  it  make  itself  heard,  can  this 
hoarse  yelping  of  sick  hounds,  this,  rabid  lying  and  frenzy 
of  such  "noble"  Pharisees  (I  remind  readers,  who  have 
ears,  once  more  of  that  Berlin  apostle  of  revenge,  Eugen 
Diihring,  who  makes  most  disreputable  and  revolting  use 
in  all  present-day  Germany  of  moral  refuse;  Diihring, 
the  paramount  moral  blusterer  that  there  is  to-day,  even 
among  his  own  kidney,  the  Anti-Semites).  They  are  all 
men  of  resentment,  are  these  physiological  distortions  and 
worm-riddled  objects,  a  whole  quivering  kingdom  of  bur- 
rowing revenge,  indefatigable  and  insatiable  in  its  out- 
bursts against  the  happy,  and  equally  so  in  disguises  for 
revenge,  in  pretexts  for  revenge:  when  will  they  really 
reach  their  final,  fondest,  most  sublime  triumph  of  re- 
venge? At  that  time,  doubtless,  when  they  succeed  in 
pushing  their  own  misery,  in  fact,  all  misery,  into  the 
consciousness  of  the  happy:  so  that  the  latter  begin  one 
day  to  be  ashamed  of  their  happiness,  and  perchance  say 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  131 

to  themselves  when  they  meet,  "It  is  a  shame  to  be 
happy;  there  is  too  much  misery!"  .  .  .  But  there  could 
not  possibly  be  a  greater  and  more  fatal  misunderstanding 
than  that  of  the  happy,  the  fit,  the  strong  in  body  and 
soul,  beginning  in  this  way  to  doubt  their  right  to  hap- 
piness. Away  with  this  "perverse  world"!  Away  with 
this  shameful  soddenness  of  sentiment!  Preventing  the 
sick  making  the  healthy  sick — for  that  is  what  such  a 
soddenness  comes  to — this  ought  to  be  our  supreme  object 
in  the  world — but  for  this  it  is  above  all  essential  that 
the  healthy  should  remain  separated  from  the  sick,  that 
they  should  even  guard  themselves  from  the  look  of  the 
sick,  that  they  should  not  even  associate  with  the  sick. 
Or  may  it,  perchance,  be  their  mission  to  be  nurses  or 
doctors?  But  they  could  not  mistake  and  disown  their 
mission  more  grossly — the  higher  must  not  degrade  itself 
to  be  the  tool  of  the  lower,  the  pathos  of  distance  must 
to  all  eternity  keep  their  missions  also  separate.  The 
right  of  the  happy  to  existence,  the  right  of  bells  with  a 
full  tone  over  the  discordant  cracked  bells,  is  verily  a 
thousand  times  greater:  they  alone  are  the  sureties  of  the 
future,  they  alone  are  bound  to  man's  future.  What 
they  can,  what  they  must  do,  that  can  the  sick  never  do, 
should  never  do!  but  if  they  are  to  be  enabled  to  do  what 
only  they  must  do,  how  can  they  possibly  be  free  to  play 
the  doctor,  the  comforter,  the  "Saviour"  of  the  sick? 
,  .  .  And  therefore  good  air!  good  air!  and  away,  at  any 
rate,  from  the  neighbourhood  of  all  the  madhouses  and 
hospitals  of  civilisation!  And  therefore  good  company, 
our  own  company,  or  solitude,  if  it  must  be  so!  but  away, 
at  any  rate,  from  the  evil  fumes  of  internal  corruption 


i32  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

and  the  secret  worm-eaten  state  of  the  sick!  that,  for- 
sooth, my  friends,  we  may  defend  ourselves,  at  any  rate 
for  still  a  time,  against  the  two  worst  plagues  that  could 
have  been  reserved  for  us — against  the  great  nausea  with 
man!  against  the  great  pity  for  man! 

IS- 

If  you  have  understood  in  all  their  depths — and  I 
demand  that  you  should  grasp  them  profoundly  and 
understand  them  profoundly — the  reasons  for  the  impos- 
sibility of  its  being  the  business  of  the  healthy  to  nurse 
the  sick,  to  make  the  sick  healthy,  it  follows  that  you 
have  grasped  this  further  necessity — the  necessity  of  doc- 
tors and  nurses  who  themselves  are  sick.  And  now  we 
have  and  hold  with  both  our  hands  the  essence  of  the 
ascetic  priest.  The  ascetic  priest  must  be  accepted  by  us 
as  the  predestined  saviour,  herdsman,  and  champion  of  the 
sick  herd:  thereby  do  we  first  understand  his  awful  his- 
toric mission.  The  lordship  over  sufferers  is  his  kingdom, 
to  that  points  his  instinct,  in  that  he  finds  his  own  spe- 
cial art,  his  master-skill,  his  kind  of  happiness.  He  must 
himself  be  sick,  he  must  be  kith  and  kin  to  the  sick  and 
the  abortions  so  as  to  understand  them,  so  as  to  arrive 
at  an  understanding  with  them;  but  he  must  also  be 
strong,  even  more  master  of  himself  than  of  others,  im- 
pregnable, forsooth,  in  his  will  for  power,  so  as  to  acquire 
the  trust  and  the  awe  of  the  weak,  so  that  he  can  be 
their  hold,  bulwark,  prop,  compulsion,  overseer,  tyrant, 
god.  He  has  to  protect  them,  protect  his  herds — against 
whom?     Against  the  healthy,  doubtless  also  against  the 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  133 

envy  towards  the  healthy.  He  must  be  the  natural  ad- 
versary and  scorner  of  every  rough,  stormy,  reinless,  hard, 
violently-predatory  health  and  power.  The  priest  is  the 
first  form  of  the  more  delicate  animal  that  scorns  more 
easily  than  it  hates.  He  will  not  be  spared  the  waging 
of  war  with  the  beasts  of  prey,  a  war  of  guile  (of  "spirit") 
rather  than  of  force,  as  is  self-evident — he  will  in  cer- 
tain cases  find  it  necessary  to  conjure  up  out  of  himself, 
or  at  any  rate  to  represent  practically  a  new  type  of  the 
beast  of  prey — a  new  animal  monstrosity  in  which  the 
polar  bear,  the  supple,  cold,  crouching  panther,  and,  not 
least  important,  the  fox,  are  joined  together  in  a  trinity 
as  fascinating  as  it  is  fearsome.  If  necessity  exacts  it, 
then  will  he  come  on  the  scene  with  bearish  seriousness, 
venerable,  wise,  cold,  full  of  treacherous  superiority,  as 
the  herald  and  mouthpiece  of  mysterious  powers,  some- 
times going  among  even  the  other  kind  of  beasts  of  prey, 
determined  as  he  is  to  sow  on  their  soil,  wherever  he  can, 
suffering,  discord,  self-contradiction,  and  only  too  sure  of 
his  art,  always  to  be  lord  of  sufferers  at  all  times.  He 
brings  with  him,  doubtless,  salve  and  balsam;  but  before 
he  can  play  the  physician  he  must  first  wound;  so,  while 
he  soothes  the  pain  which  the  wound  makes,  he  at  the 
same  time  poisons  the  wound.  Well  versed  is  he  in  this 
above  all  things,  is  this  wizard  and  wild  beast  tamer,  in 
whose  vicinity  everything  healthy  must  needs  become  ill, 
and  everything  ill  must  needs  become  tame.  He  protects, 
in  sooth,  his  sick  herd  well  enough,  does  this  strange 
herdsman;  he  protects  them  also  against  themselves, 
against  the  sparks  (even  in  the  centre  of  the  herd)  of 
wickedness,  knavery,  malice,  and  all  the  other  ills  that 


i34  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

the  plaguey  and  the  sick  are  heir  to;  he  fights  with  cun- 
ning, hardness,  and  stealth  against  anarchy  and  against 
the  ever  imminent  break-up  inside  the  herd,  where  resent- 
ment, that  most  dangerous  blasting-stuff  and  explosive, 
ever  accumulates  and  accumulates.  Getting  rid  of  this 
blasting-stuff  in  such  a  way  that  it  does  not  blow  up  the 
herd  and  the  herdsman,  that  is  his  real  feat,  his  supreme 
utility;  if  you  wish  to  comprise  in  the  shortest  formula 
the  value  of  the  priestly  life,  it  would  be  correct  to  say 
the  priest  is  the  diverter  of  the  course  0}  resentment. 
Every  sufferer,  in  fact,  searches  instinctively  for  a  cause 
of  his  suffering;  to  put  it  more  exactly,  a  doer, — to  put 
it  still  more  precisely,  a  sentient  responsible  doer, — in 
brief,  something  living,  on  which,  either  actually  or  in 
effigy,  he  can  on  any  pretext  vent  his  emotions.  For 
the  venting  of  emotions  is  the  sufferer's  greatest  attempt 
at  alleviation,  that  is  to  say,  stupefaction,  his  mechanic- 
ally desired  narcotic  against  pain  of  any  kind.  It  is  in 
this  phenomenon  alone  that  is  found,  according  to  my 
judgment,  the  real  physiological  cause  of  resentment,  re- 
venge, and  their  family  is  to  be  found — that  is,  in  a 
demand  for  the  deadening  of  pain  through  emotion:  this 
cause  is  generally,  but  in  my  view  very  erroneously, 
looked  for  in  the  defensive  parry  of  a  bare  protective 
principle  of  reaction,  of  a  "reflex  movement"  in  the  case 
of  any  sudden  hurt  and  danger,  after  the  manner  that  a 
decapitated  frog  still  moves  in  order  to  get  away  from  a 
corrosive  acid.  But  the  difference  is  fundamental.  In 
one  case  the  object  is  to  prevent  being  hurt  any  more; 
in  the  other  case  the  object  is  to  deaden  a  racking,  in- 
sidious, nearly  unbearable  pain  by  a  more  violent  emotion 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  135 

of  any  kind  whatsoever,  and  at  any  rate  for  the  time 
being  to  drive  it  out  of  the  consciousness— for  this  pur- 
pose an  emotion  is  needed,  as  wild  an  emotion  as  pos- 
sible, and  to  excite  that  emotion  some  excuse  or  other  is 
needed.  "It  must  be  somebody's  fault  that  I  feel  bad" — 
this  kind  of  reasoning  is  peculiar  to  all  invalids,  and  is 
but  the  more  pronounced,  the  more  ignorant  they  remain 
of  the  real  cause  of  their  feeling  bad,  the  physiological 
cause  (the  cause  may  lie  in  a  disease  of  the  nervous 
sympathicus,  or  in  an  excessive  secretion  of  bile,  or  in  a 
want  of  sulphate  and  phosphate  of  potash  in  the  blood, 
or  in  pressure  in  the  bowels  which  stops  the  circulation  of 
the  blood,  or  in  degeneration  of  the  ovaries,  and  so  forth). 
All  sufferers  have  an  awful  resourcefulness  and  ingenuity 
in  finding  excuses  for  painful  emotions;  they  even  enjoy 
their  jealousy,  their  broodings  over  base  actions  and  ap- 
parent injuries,  they  burrow  through  the  intestines  of  their 
past  and  present  in  their  search  for  obscure  mysteries, 
wherein  they  will  be  at  liberty  to  wallow  in  a  torturing 
suspicion  and  get  drunk  on  the  venom  of  their  own 
malice — they  tear  open  the  oldest  wounds,  they  make 
themselves  bleed  from  the  scars  which  have  long  been 
healed,  they  make  evil-doers  out  of  friends,  wife,  child, 
and  everything  which  is  nearest  to  them.  "I  suffer:  it 
must  be  somebody's  fault" — so  thinks  every  sick  sheep. 
But  his  herdsman,  the  ascetic  priest,  says  to  him,  "Quite 
so,  my  sheep,  it  must  be  the  fault  of  some  one;  but  thou 
thyself  art  that  same  one,  it  is  all  the  fault  of  thyself 
alone — it  is*  the  fault  of  thyself  alone  against  thyself'': 
that  is  bold  enough,  false  enough,  but  one  thing  is  at  least 


136  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

attained;  thereby,  as  I  have  said,  the  course  of  resent- 
ment is — diverted. 


1 6. 


You  can  see  now  what  the  remedial  instinct  of  life  has 
at  least  tried  to  effect,  according  to  my  conception, 
through  the  ascetic  priest,  and  the  purpose  for  which  he 
had  to  employ  a  temporary  tyranny  of  such  paradoxical 
and  anomalous  ideas  as  "guilt,"  "sin,"  "sinfulness," 
"corruption,"  "damnation."  What  was  done  was  to  make 
the  sick  harmless  up  to  a  certain  point,  to  destroy  the 
incurable  by  means  of  themselves,  to  turn  the  milder 
cases  severely  on  to  themselves,  to  give  their  resentment 
a  backward  direction  ("man  needs  but  one  thing"),  and 
to  exploit  similarly  the  bad  instincts  of  all  sufferers  with 
a  view  to  self-discipline,  self-surveillance,  self-mastery. 
It  is  obvious  that  there  can  be  no  question  at  all  in  the 
case  of  a  "medication"  of  this  kind,  a  mere  emotional 
medication,  of  any  real  healing  of  the  sick  in  the  physio- 
logical sense;  it  cannot  even  for  a  moment  be  asserted 
that  in  this  connection  the  instinct  of  life  has  taken  heal- 
ing as  its  goal  and  purpose.  On  the  one  hand,  a  kind 
of  congestion  and  organisation  of  the  sick  (the  word 
"Church"  is  the  most  popular  name  for  it) ;  on  the  other, 
a  kind  of  provisional  safeguarding  of  the  comparatively 
healthy,  the  more  perfect  specimens,  the  cleavage  of  a 
rift  between  healthy  and  sick — for  a  long  time  that  was 
all!  and  it  was  much!  it  was  very  much! 

I  am  proceeding,  as  you  see,  in  this  essay,  from  an 
hypothesis  which,  as  far  as  such  readers  as  I  want  are 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  137 

concerned,  does  not  require  to  be  proved;  the  hypothesis 
that  "sinfulness"  in  man  is  not  an  actual  fact,  but  rather 
merely  the  interpretation  of  a  fact,  of  a  physiological 
discomfort, — a  discomfort  seen  through  a  moral  religious 
perspective  which  is  no  longer  binding  upon  us.  The 
fact,  therefore,  that  any  one  feels  "guilty,"  "sinful,"  is 
certainly  not  yet  any  proof  that  he  is  right  in  feeling  so, 
any  more  than  any  one  is  healthy  simply  because  he  feels 
healthy.  Remember  the  celebrated  witch-ordeals:  in 
those  days  the  most  acute  and  humane  judges  had  no 
doubt  but  that  in  these  cases  they  were  confronted  with 
guilt, — the  "witches"  themselves  had  no  doubt  on  the 
point, — and  yet  the  guilt  was  lacking.  Let  me  elaborate 
this  hypothesis:  I  do  not  for  a  minute  accept  the  very 
"pain  in  the  soul"  as  a  real  fact,  but  only  as  an  explana- 
tion  (a  casual  explanation)  of  facts  that  could  not  hith- 
erto be  precisely  formulated;  I  regard  it  therefore  as 
something  as  yet  absolutely  in  the  air  and  devoid  of  scien- 
tific cogency — just  a  nice  fat  word  in  the  place  of  a  lean 
note  of  interrogation.  When  any  one  fails  to  get  rid  of 
ihis  "pain  in  the  soul,"  the  cause  is,  speaking  crudely, 
to  be  found  not  in  his  "soul"  but  more  probably  in  his 
stomach  (speaking  crudely,  I  repeat,  but  by  no  means 
wishing  thereby  that  you  should  listen  to  me  or  under- 
stand me  in  a  crude  spirit).  A  strong  and  well-consti- 
tuted man  digests  his  experiences  (deeds  and  misdeeds  all 
included)  just  as  he  digests  his  meats,  even  when  he  has 
some  tough  morsels  to  swallow.  If  he  fails  to  "relieve 
himself"  of  an  experience,  this  kind  of  indigestion  is  quite 
as  much  physiological  as  the  other  indigestion — and 
indeed,  in  more  ways  than  one,  simply  one  of  the  results 


1 38  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

of  the  other.  You  can  adopt  such  a  theory,  and  yet 
entre  nous  be  nevertheless  the  strongest  opponent  of  all 
materialism. 


17- 

But  is  he  really  a  physician,  this  ascetic  priest?  We 
already  understand  why  we  are  scarcely  allowed  to  call 
him  a  physician,  however  much  he  likes  to  feel  a  "saviour" 
and  let  himself  be  worshipped  as  a  saviour.*  It  is  only 
the  actual  suffering,  the  discomfort  of  the  sufferer,  which 
he  combats,  not  its  cause,  not  the  actual  state  of  sick- 
ness— this  needs  must  constitute  our  most  radical  objec- 
tion to  priestly  medication.  But  just  once  put  yourself 
into  that  point  of  view,  of  which  the  priests  have  a 
monopoly,  you  will  find  it  hard  to  exhaust  your  amaze- 
ment, at  what  from  that  standpoint  he  has  completely 
seen,  sought,  and  found.  The  mitigation  of  suffering, 
every  kind  of  "consoling" — all  this  manifests  itself  as  his 
very  genius:  with  what  ingenuity  has  he  interpreted  his 
mission  of  consoler,  with  what  aplomb  and  audacity  has 
he  chosen  weapons  necessary  for  the  part.  Christianity 
in  particular  should  be  dubbed  a  great  treasure-chamber 
of  ingenious  consolations, — such  a  store  of  refreshing, 
soothing,  deadening  drugs  has  it  accumulated  within 
itself;  so  many  of  the  most  dangerous  and  daring  ex- 
pedients has  it  hazarded;  with  such  subtlety,  refinement. 
Oriental  refinement,  has  it  divined  what  emotional  stimu- 
lants can  conquer,  at  any  rate  for  a  time,  the  deep  de- 


*  In  the  German  text  "Heiland."    This  has  the  double  mean- 
ing of  "healer"  and  "saviour."— H.  B.  S. 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  139 

pression,  the  leaden  fatigue,  the  black  melancholy  of 
physiological  cripples — for,  speaking  generally,  all  relig- 
ions are  mainly  concerned  with  fighting  a  certain  fatigue 
and  heaviness  that  has  infected  everything.  You  can 
regard  it  as  prima  facie  probable  that  in  certain  places 
in  the  world  there  was  almost  bound  to  prevail  from  time 
to  time  among  large  masses  of  the  population  a  sense  of 
physiological  depression,  which,  however,  owing  to  their 
lack  of  physiological  knowledge,  did  not  appear  to  their 
consciousness  as  such,  so  that  consequently  its  "cause" 
and  its  cure  can  only  be  sought  and  essayed  in  the  science 
of  moral  psychology  (this,  in  fact,  is  my  most  general 
formula  for  what  is  generally  called  a  "religion").  Such 
a  feeling  of  depression  can  have  the  most  diverse  origins; 
it  may  be  the  result  of  the  crossing  of  too  heterogeneous 
races  (or  of  classes— genealogical  and  racial  differences 
are  also  brought  out  in  the  classes:  the  European  "Welt- 
schmerz,"  the  "Pessimism"  of  the  nineteenth  century,  is 
really  the  result  of  an  absurd  and  sudden  class-mixture) ; 
it  may  be  brought  about  by  a  mistaken  emigration — a 
race  falling  into  a  climate  for  which  its  power  of  adapta- 
tion is  insufficient  (the  case  of  the  Indians  in  India) ;  it 
may  be  the  effect  of  old  age  and  fatigue  (the  Parisian 
pessimism  from  1850  onwards) ;  it  may  be  a  wrong  diet 
(the  alcoholism  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  nonsense  of  vege- 
tarianism— which,  however,  have  in  their  favour  the 
authority  of  Sir  Christopher  in  Shakespeare) ;  it  may  be 
blood-deterioration,  malaria,  syphilis,  and  the  like  (Ger- 
man depression  after  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  which  in- 
fected half  Germany  with  evil  diseases,  and  thereby  paved 
the  way  for  German  servility,  for  German  pusillanimity) . 


140  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

In  such  a  case  there  is  invariably  recourse  to  a  ivar  on  a 
grand  scale  with  the  feeling  of  depression;  let  us  inform 
ourselves  briefly  on  its  most  important  practices  and 
phases  (I  leave  on  one  side,  as  stands  to  reason,  the 
actual  philosophic  war  against  the  feeling  of  depression 
which  is  usually  simultaneous — it  is  interesting  enough, 
but  too  absurd,  too  practically  negligible,  too  full  of  cob- 
webs, too  much  of  a  hole-and-corner  affair,  especially 
when  pain  is  proved  to  be  a  mistake,  on  the  naif  hypothe- 
sis that  pain  must  needs  vanish  when  the  mistake  under- 
lying it  is  recognised — but  behold!  it  does  anything  but 
vanish  .  .  .)•  That  dominant  depression  is  primarily 
jought  by  weapons  which  reduce  the  consciousness  of  life 
itself  to  the  lowest  degree.  Wherever  possible,  no  more 
wishes,  no  more  wants;  shun  everything  which  produces 
emotion,  which  produces  "blood"  (eating  no  salt,  the 
fakir  hygiene);  no  love;  no  hate;  equanimity;  no  re- 
venge; no  getting  rich;  no  work;  begging!  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, no  woman,  or  as  little  woman  as  possible;  as  far 
as  the  intellect  is  concerned,  Pascal's  principle,  "il  jaut 
s'abetir."  To  put  the  result  in  ethical  and  psychological 
language,  "self-annihilation,"  "sanctification";  to  put  it  in 
physiological  language,  "hypnotism" — the  attempt  to  find 
some  approximate  human  equivalent  for  what  hibernation 
is  for  certain  animals,  for  what  (estivation  is  for  many 
tropical  plants,  a  minimum  of  assimilation  and  metab- 
olism in  which  life  just  manages  to  subsist  without  r£ally 
coming  into  the  consciousness.  An  amazing  amount  of 
human  energy  has  been  devoted  to  this  object — perhaps 
uselessly?  There  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  but  that 
such  sportsmen  of  "saintliness,"  in  whom  at  times  nearly 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  141 

every  nation  has  abounded,  have  really  found  a  genuine 
relief  from  that  which  they  have  combated  with  such  a 
rigorous  training — in  countless  cases  they  really  escaped 
by  the  help  of  their  system  of  hypnotism  away  from  deep 
physiological  depression;  their  method  is  consequently 
counted  among  the  most  universal  ethnological  facts. 
Similarly  it  is  improper  to  consider  such  a  plan  for  starv- 
ing the  physical  element  and  the  desires,  as  in  itself  a 
symptom  of  insanity  (as  a  clumsy  species  of  roast-beef- 
eating  "freethinkers"  and  Sir  Christophers  are  fain  to  do) ; 
all  the  more  certain  is  it  that  their  method  can  and  does 
pave  the  way  to  all  kinds  of  mental  disturbances,  for  in- 
stance, "inner  lights"  (as  far  as  the  case  of  Hesychasts 
of  Mount  Athos),  auditory  and  visual  hallucinations, 
voluptuous  ecstasies  and  effervescences  of  sensualism  (the 
history  of  St.  Theresa).  The  explanation  of  such  events 
given  by  the  victims  is  always  the  acme  of  fanatical  false- 
hood; this  is  self-evident.  Note  well,  however,  the  tone 
of  implicit  gratitude  that  rings  in  the  very  will  for  an 
explanation  of  such  a  character.  The  supreme  state,  sal- 
vation itself,  that  final  goal  of  universal  hypnosis  and 
peace,  is  always  regarded  by  them  as  the  mystery  of 
mysteries,  which  even  the  most  supreme  symbols  are 
inadequate  to  express;  it  is  regarded  as  an  entry  and 
homecoming  to  the  essence  of  things,  as  a  liberation  from 
all  illusions,  as  "knowledge,"  as  "truth,"  as  "being,"  as 
an  escape  from  every  end,  every  wish,  every  action,  as 
something  even  beyond  Good  and  Evil. 

"Good  and  Evil,"  quoth  the  Buddhists,  "both  are 
fetters.     The  perfect  man  is  master  of  them  both." 

"The  done  and  the  undone,"  quoth  the  disciple  of  the 


1 42  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

Vedanta,  "do  him  no  hurt;  the  good  and  the  evil  he 
shakes  from  off  him,  sage  that  he  is;  his  kingdom  suffers 
no  more  from  any  act;  good  and  evil,  he  goes  beyond 
them  both." — An  absolutely  Indian  conception,  as  much 
Brahmanist  as  Buddhist.  Neither  in  the  Indian  nor  in 
the  Christian  doctrine  is  this  "Redemption"  regarded  as 
attainable  by  means  of  virtue  and  moral  improvement, 
however,  high  they  may  place  the  value  of  the  hypnotic 
efficiency  of  virtue:  keep  clear  on  this  point — indeed  it 
simply  corresponds  with  the  facts.  The  fact  that  they 
remained  true  on  this  point  is  perhaps  to  be  regarded 
as  the  best  specimen  of  realism  in  the  three  great  religions, 
absolutely  soaked  as  they  are  with  morality,  with  this  one 
exception.  "For  those  who  know,  there  is  no  duty." 
"Redemption  is  not  attained  by  the  acquisition  of  virtues; 
for  redemption  consists  in  being  one  with  Brahman,  who 
is  incapable  of  acquiring  any  perfection;  and  equally  little 
does  it  consist  in  the  giving  up  of  faults,  for  the  Brahman, 
unity  with  whom  is  what  constitutes  redemption,  is  eter- 
nally pure"  (these  passages  are  from  the  Commentaries 
of  the  Cankara,  quoted  from  the  first  real  European 
expert  of  the  Indian  philosophy,  my  friend  Paul  Deussen). 
We  wish,  therefore,  to  pay  honour  to  the  idea  of  "redemp- 
tion" in  the  great  religions,  but  it  is  somewhat  hard  to 
remain  serious  in  view  of  the  appreciation  meted  out  to 
the  deep  sleep  by  these  exhausted  pessmists  who  are  too 
tired  even  to  dream — to  the  deep  sleep  considered,  that 
is,  as  already  a  fusing  into  Brahman,  as  the  attainment  of 
the  unio  mystica  with  God.  "When  he  has  completely 
gone  to  sleep,"  says  on  this  point  the  oldest  and  most 
venerable  "script,"  "and  come  to  perfect  rest,  so  that 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  143 

1  sees  no  more  any  vision,  then,  oh  dear  one,  is  he  united 
ith  Being,  he  has  entered  into  his  own  self — encircled  by 
le  Self  with  its  absolute  knowledge,  he  has  no  more  any 
msciousness  of  that  which  is  without  or  of  that  which 
within.     Day  and  night  cross  not  these  bridges,  nor 
ge,  nor  death,  nor  suffering,  nor  good  deeds,  nor  evil 
eeds."     "In  deep  sleep,"  say  similarly  the  believers  in 
lis  deepest  of  the  three  great  religions,  "does  the  soul 
lit  itself  from  out  this  body  of  ours,  enters  the  supreme 
.ght  and  stands  out  therein  in  its  true  shape:  therein  is  it 
he  supreme  spirit  itself,  which  travels  about,  while  it 
ests  and  plays  and  enjoys  itself,  whether  with  women,  or 
:hariots,  or  friends;  there  do  its  thoughts  turn  no  more 
>ack  to  this  appanage  of  a  body,  to  which  the  'prana' 
'the  vital  breath)   is  harnessed  like  a  beast  of  burden 
:o  the  cart."    None  the  less  we  will  take  care  to  realise 
(as  we  did  when  discussing  "redemption")  that  in  spite 
of  all  its  pomps  of  Oriental  extravagance  this  simply  ex- 
presses the  same  criticism  on  life  as  did  the  clear,  cold, 
Greekly  cold,  but  yet  suffering  Epicurus.     The  hypnotic 
sensation   of  nothingness,    the   peace   of   deepest   sleep, 
anaesthesia  in  short — that  is  what  passes  with  the  suf- 
ferers and  the  absolutely  depressed  for,  forsooth,  their 
supreme  good,  their  value  of  values ;  that  is  what  must  be 
treasured  by  them  as  something  positive,  be  felt  by  them 
as  the  essence  of  the  Positive   (according  to  the  same 
logic  of   the  feelings,   nothingness  is  in   all   pessimistic 
religions  called  God). 

18. 

Such  a  hypnotic  deadening  of  sensibility  and  suscep- 


144  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

tibility  to  pain,  which  presupposes  somewhat  rare  powers, 
especially  courage,  contempt  of  opinion,  intellectual 
stoicism,  is  less  frequent  than  another  and  certainly  easier 
framing  which  is  tried  against  states  of  depression.  I 
mean  mechancal  activity.  It  is  indisputable  that  a  suf- 
fering existence  can  be  thereby  considerably  alleviated. 
This  fact  is  called  to-day  by  the  somewhat  ignoble  title 
of  the  "Blessing  of  work."  The  alleviation  consists  in  the 
attention  of  the  sufferer  being  absolutely  diverted  from 
suffering,  in  the  incessant  monopoly  of  the  consciousness 
by  action,  so  that  consequently  there  is  little  room  left  for 
suffering — for  narrow  is  it,  this  chamber  of  human  con- 
sciousness! Mechanical  activity  and  its  corollaries,  such 
as  absolute  regularity,  punctilious  unreasoning  obedience, 
the  chronic  routine  of  life,  the  complete  occupation  of 
time,  a  certain  liberty  to  be  impersonal,  nay,  a  training  in 
"impersonality,"  self-forgetfulness,  "incuria  sai" — with 
what  thoroughness  and  expert  subtlety  have  all  these 
methods  been  exploited  by  the  ascetic  priest  in  his  war 
with  pain! 

When  he  has  to  tackle  sufferers  of  the  lower  orders, 
slaves,  or  prisoners  (or  women,  who  for  the  most  part  are 
a  compound  of  labour-slave  and  prisoner),  all  he  has  to 
do  is  to  juggle  a  little  with  the  names,  and  to  rechristen, 
so  as  to  make  them  see  henceforth  a  benefit,  a  compara- 
tive happiness,  in  objects  which  they  hated — the  slave's 
discontent  with  his  lot  was  at  any  rate  not  invented  by 
the  priests.  An  even  more  popular  means  of  fighting 
depression  is  die  ordaining  of  a  little  joy,  which  is  easily 
accessible  and  can  be  made  into  a  rule;  this  medication  is 
frequently  used  in  conjunction  with  the  former  ones.    The 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  145 

most  frequent  form  in  which  joy  is  prescribed  as  a  cure 
is  the  joy  in  producing  joy  (such  as  doing  good,  giving 
presents,  alleviating,  helping,  exhorting,  comforting,  prais- 
ing, treating  with  distinction) ;  together  with  the  prescrip- 
tion of  "love  your  neighbour."  The  ascetic  priest  pre- 
scribes, though  in  the  most  cautious  doses,  what  is  prac- 
tically a  stimulation  of  the  strongest  and  most  life- 
assertive  impulse — the  Will  for  Power.  The  happiness 
involved  in  the  "smallest  superiority"  which  is  the  con- 
comitant of  all  benefiting,  helping,  extolling,  making  one's 
self  useful,  is  the  most  ample  consolation,  of  which,  if 
they  are  well-advised,  physiological  distortions  avail  them- 
selves: in  other  cases  they  hurt  each  other,  and  naturally 
in  obedience  to  the  same  radical  instinct.  An  investiga- 
tion of  the  origin  of  Christianity  in  the  Roman  world 
shows  that  co-operative  unions  for  poverty,  sickness,  and 
burial  sprang  up  in  the  lowest  stratum  of  contemporary 
society,  amid  which  the  chief  antidote  against  depression, 
the  little  joy  experienced  in  mutual  benefits,  was  delib- 
erately fostered.  Perchance  this  was  then  a  novelty,  a 
real  discovery?  This  conjuring  up  of  the  will  for  co- 
operation, for  family  organisation,  for  communal  life,  for 
"Coznacula,"  necessarily  brought  the  Will  for  Power, 
which  had  been  already  infinitesimally  stimulated,  to  a 
new  and  much  fuller  manifestation.  The  herd  organisa- 
tion is  a  genuine  advance  and  triumph  in  the  fight  with 
depression.  With  the  growth  of  the  community  there 
matures  even  to  individuals  a  new  interest,  which  often 
enough  takes  him  out  of  the  more  personal  element  in 
his  discontent,  his  aversion  to  himself,  the  "despectus 
sui"  of  Geulincx.     All  sick  and  diseased  people  strive 


i46  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

instinctively  after  a  herd-organisation,  out  of  a  desire  to 
shake  off  their  sense  of  oppressive  discomfort  and  weak- 
ness; the  ascetic  priest  divines  this  instinct  and  promotes 
it;  wherever  a  herd  exists  it  is  the  instinct  of  weakness 
which  has  wished  for  the  herd,  and  the  cleverness  of  the 
priests  which  has  organised  it,  for,  mark  this:  by  an 
equally  natural  necessity  the  strong  strive  as  much  for 
isolation  as  the  weak  for  union:  when  the  former  bind 
themselves  it  is  only  with  a  view  to  an  aggressive  joint 
action  and  joint  satisfaction  of  their  Will  for  Power,  much 
against  the  wishes  of  their  individual  consciences;  the 
latter,  on  the  contrary,  range  themselves  together  with 
positive  delimit  in  such  a  muster — their  instincts  are  as 
much  gratified  thereby  as  the  instincts  of  the  "born  mas- 
ter" (that  is,  the  solitary  beast-of-prey  species  of  man) 
are  disturbed  and  wounded  to  the  quick  by  organisation. 
There  is  always  lurking  beneath  every  oligarchy— such  is 
the  universal  lesson  of  history — the  desire  for  tyranny. 
Every  oligarchy  is  continually  quivering  with  the  tension 
of  the  effort  required  by  each  individual  to  keep  master- 
ing this  desire.  (Such,  e.g.,  was  the  Greek;  Plato  shows 
it  in  a  hundred  places,  Plato,  who  knew  his  contempo- 
raries— and  himself.) 

19. 

The  methods  employed  by  the  ascetic  priest,  which  we 
have  already  leamt  to  know— stifling  of  all  vitality,  me- 
chanical energy,  the  little  joy,  and  especially  the  method 
of  "love  your  neighbour"  herd-organisation,  the  awaking 
of  the  communal  consciousness  of  power,  to  such  a  pitch 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  147 

that  the  individual's  disgust  with  himself  becomes  eclipsed 
by  his  delight  in  the  thriving  of  the  community — these 
are,  according  to  modern  standards,  the  "innocent" 
methods  employed  in  the  fight  with  depression;  let  us 
turn  now  to  the  more  interesting  topic  of  the  "guilty" 
methods.  The  guilty  methods  spell  one  thing:  to  produce 
emotional  excess — which  is  used  as  the  most  efficacious 
anaesthetic  against  their  depressing  state  of  protracted 
pain;  this  is  why  priestly  ingenuity  has  proved  quite  inex- 
haustible in  thinking  out  this  one  question:  "By  what 
means  can  you  produce  an  emotional  excess?"  This 
sounds  harsh:  it  is  manifest  that  it  would  sound  nicer 
and  would  grate  on  one's  ears  less,  if  I  were  to  say, 
forsooth:  "The  ascetic  priest  made  use  at  all  times  of 
the  enthusiasm  contained  in  all  strong  emotions."  But 
what  is  the  good  of  still  soothing  the  delicate  ears  of  our 
modern  effeminates?  What  is  the  good  on  our  side  of 
budging  one  single  inch  before  their  verbal  Pecksniffian- 
ism?  For  us  psychologists  to  do  that  would  be  at  once 
practical  Pecksniffianism,  apart  from  the  fact  of  its  nau- 
seating us.  The  good  taste  (others  might  say,  the  right- 
eousness) of  a  psychologist  nowadays  consists,  if  at  all,  in 
combating  the  shamefully  moralised  language  with  which 
all  modern  judgments  on  men  and  things  are  smeared. 
For,  do  not  deceive  yourself:  what  constitutes  the  chief 
characteristic  of  modern  souls  and  of  modern  books  is  not 
the  lying,  but  the  innocence  which  is  part  and  parcel  of 
their  intellectual  dishonesty.  The  inevitable  running  up 
against  this  "innocence"  everywhere  constitutes  the  most 
distasteful  feature  of  the  somewhat  dangerous  business 
which  a  modern  psychologist  has  to  undertake:   it  is  a 


148  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

part  of  our  great  danger — it  is  a  road  which  perhaps  leads 
straight  to  the  great  nausea— I  know  quite  well  the 
purpose  which  all  modern  books  will  and  can  serve 
(granted  that  they  last,  which  I  am  not  afraid  of,  and 
snted  equally  that  there  is  to  be  at  some  future  day  a 
L'rneration  with  a  more  rigid,  more  severe,  and  healthier 
taste) — the  junction  which  all  modernity  generally  will 
serve  with  posterity:  that  of  an  emetic, — and  this  by 
reason  of  its  moral  sugariness  and  falsity,  its  ingrained 
feminism,  which  it  is  pleased  to  call  "Idealism,"  and  at 
any  rate  believes  to  be  idealism.  Our  cultured  men  of 
to-day,  our  "good"  men,  do  not  lie — that  is  true;  but  it 
doe?  not  redound  to  their  honour!  The  real  lie,  the  gen- 
uine, determined,  "honest"  lie  (on  whose  value  you  can 
listen  to  Plato)  would  prove  too  tough  and  strong  an 
article  for  them  by  a  long  way;  it  would  be  asking  them 
to  do  what  people  have  been  forbidden  to  ask  them  to  do, 
to  open  their  eyes  to  their  own  selves,  and  to  learn  to 
distinguish  between  "true"  and  "false"  in  their  own 
selves.  The  dishonest  lie  alone  suits  them:  everything 
which  fools  a  good  man  is  perfectly  incapable  of  any  other 
attitude  to  anything  than  that  of  a  dishonourable  liar,  an 
absolute  liar,  but  none  the  less  an  innocent  liar,  a  blue- 
eyed  liar,  a  virtuous  liar.  These  "good  men,"  they  are  all 
now  tainted  with  morality  through  and  through,  and  as 
far  as  honour  is  concerned  they  are  disgraced  and  cor- 
rupted for  all  eternity.  Which  of  them  could  stand  a 
further  truth  "about  man"?  or,  put  more  tangibly,  which 
<>f  them  could  put  up  with  a  true  biography?  One  or 
:  ;.inces:  Lord  Byron  composed  a  most  personal 
autobiography,  but  Thomas  Moore  was  "too  good"  for 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  149 

it;  he  burnt  his  friend's  papers.  Dr.  G  winner,  Schopen- 
hauer's executor,  is  said  to  have  done  the  same;  for 
Schopenhauer  as  well  wrote  much  about  himself,  and 
perhaps  also  against  himself  (sis  eauxov).  The  virtuous 
American  Thayer,  Beethoven's  biographer,  suddenly 
stopped  his  work:  he  had  come  to  a  certain  point  in  that 
honourable  and  simple  life,  and  could  stand  it  no  longer. 
Moral:  What  sensible  man  nowadays  writes  one  honest 
word  about  himself?  He  must  already  belong  to  the 
Order  of  Holy  Foolhardiness.  We  are  promised  an  auto- 
biography of  Richard  Wagner;  who  doubts  but  that  it 
would  be  a  clever  autobiography?  Think,  forsooth,  of 
the  grotesque  horror  which  the  Catholic  priest  Janssen 
aroused  in  Germany  with  his  inconceivably  square  and 
harmless  pictures  of  the  German  Reformation;  what 
wouldn't  people  do  if  some  real  psychologist  were  to 
tell  us  about  a  genuine  Luther,  tell  us,  not  with  the 
moralist  simplicity  of  a  country  priest  or  the  sweet  and 
cautious  modesty  of  a  Protestant  historian,  but  say 
with  the  fearlessness  of  a  Taine,  that  springs  from  force 
of  character  and  not  from  a  prudent  toleration  of  force. 
(The  Germans,  by  the  bye,  have  already  produced  the 
classic  specimen  of  this  toleration — they  may  well  be 
allowed  to  reckon  him  as  one  of  their  own,  in  Leopold 
Ranke,  that  born  classical  advocate  of  every  causa  jortior, 
that  cleverest  of  all  the  clever  opportunists.) 


20. 


But  you  will  soon  understand  me. — Putting  it  shortly, 
there  is  reason  enough,  is  there  not,  for  us  psychologists 


ISO  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

nowadays  never  to  get  away  from  a  certain  mistrust  of 
uur  (i;  es?     Probably  even  we  ourselves  are  still 

"too  good"  for  our  work;  probably,  whatever  contempt 
we  feel  for  this  popular  craze  for  morality,  we  ourselves 
are  perhaps  none  the  less  its  victims,  prey,  and  slaves; 
probably  it  infects  even  us.  Of  what  was  that  diplomat 
warning  us,  when  he  said  to  his  colleagues:  "Let  us 
especially  mistrust  our  first  impulses,  gentlemen!  they 
arc  almost  always  good"?  So  should  nowadays  every 
psychologist  talk  to  his  colleagues.  And  thus  we  get 
back  to  our  problem,  which  in  point  of  fact  does  require 
from  us  a  certain  severity,  a  certain  mistrust  especially 
against  "first  impulses."  The  ascetic  ideal  in  the  service 
of  projected  emotional  excess: — he  who  remembers  the 
previous  essay  will  already  partially  anticipate  the  essen- 
tial meaning  compressed  into  these  above  ten  words. 
The  thorough  unswitching  of  the  human  soul,  the  plung- 
ing of  it  into  terror,  frost,  ardour,  rapture,  so  as  to  free 
it,  as  through  some  lightning  shock,  from  all  the  small- 
s  and  pettiness  of  unhappiness,  depression,  and  dis- 
comfort: what  ways  lead  to  this  goal?  And  which  of 
these  ways  does  so  most  safely?  ...  At  bottom  all  great 
emotions  have  this  power,  provided  that  they  find  a 
sudden  outlet — emotions  such  as  rage,  fear,  lust,  revenge, 
hope,  triumph,  despair,  cruelty;  and,  in  sooth,  the  ascetic 
priest  has  had  no  scruples  in  taking  into  his  service  the 

k  of  hounds  that  rage  in  the  human  kennel, 
unleashing  now  these  and  now  those,  with  the  same  con- 

ct  of  waking  man  out  of  his  protracted  melan- 
choly, of  chasing  away,  at  any  rate  for  a  time,  his  dull 
lis  shrinking  misery,  but  always  under  the  sanction 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  151 

»of  a  religious  interpretation  and  justification.  This  emo- 
tional excess  has  subsequently  to  be  paid  for,  this  is  self- 
evident — it  makes  the  ill  more  ill — and  therefore  this  kind 
of  remedy  for  pain  is  according  to  modern  standards  a. 
"guilty"  kind. 

The  dictates  of  fairness,  however,  require  that  we  should 
all  the  more  emphasise  the  fact  that  this  remedy  is  ap- 
plied with  a  good  conscience,  that  the  ascetic  priest  has 
prescribed  it  in  the  most  implicit  belief  in  its  utility  and 
indispensability ; — often  enough  almost  collapsing  in  the 
presence  of  the  pain  which  he  created; — that  we  should 
similarly  emphasise  the  fact  that  the  violent  physiological 
revenges  of  such  excesses,  even  perhaps  the  mental  dis- 
turbances, are  not  absolutely  inconsistent  with  the  general 
tenor  of  this  kind  of  remedy;  this  remedy,  which,  as  we 
have  shown  previously,  is  not  for  the  purpose  of  healing 
diseases,  but  of  fighting  the  unhappiness  of  that  depres- 
sion, the  alleviation  and  deadening  of  which  was  its 
object.  The  object  was  consequently  achieved.  The 
keynote  by  which  the  ascetic  priest  was  enabled  to  get 
every  kind  of  agonising  and  ecstatic  music  to  play  on  the 
fibres  of  the  human  soul — was,  as  every  one  knows,  the 
exploitation  of  the  feeling  of  "guilt."  I  have  already 
indicated  in  the  previous  essay  the  origin  of  this  feeling 
— as  a  piece  of  animal  psychology  and  nothing  else:  we 
were  thus  confronted  with  the  feeling  of  "guilt,"  in  its 
crude  state,  as  it  were.  It  was  first  in  the  hands  of  the 
priest,  real  artist  that  he  was  in  the  feeling  of  guilt,  that 
it  took  shape— oh,  what  a  shape! 

"Sin" — for  that  is  the  name  of  the  new  priestly  version 
of  the  animal  "bad-conscience"  (the  inverted  cruelty) — 


i52  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

ip  to  the  present  been  the  greatest  event  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  diseased  soul;  in  "sin"  we  find  the  most 
perilous  and  fatal  masterpiece  of  religious  interpretation. 
Imagine  man,  suffering  from  himself,  some  way  or  other 
but  at  any  rate  physiologically,  perhaps  like  an  animal 
shut  up  in  a  cage,  not  clear  as  to  the  why  and  the  where- 
fore!  imagine  him  in  his  desire  for  reasons — reasons  bring 
relief — in  his  desire  again  for  remedies,  narcotics  at  last, 
consulting  one,  who  knows  even  the  occult — and  see,  lo 
and  behold,  he  gets  a  hint  from  his  wizard,  the  ascetic 
priest,  his  first  hint  on  the  "cause"  of  his  trouble:  he 
must  search  for  it  /';/  liimselj,  in  his  guiltiness,  in  a  piece 
of  the  past,  he  must  understand  his  very  suffering  as  a 
state  of  punishment.  He  has  heard,  he  has  understood, 
has  the  unfortunate:  he  is  now  in  the  plight  of  a  hen 
round  which  a  line  has  been  drawn.  He  never  gets  out 
of  the  circle  of  lines.  The  sick  man  has  been  turned  into 
"the  sinner'' — and  now  for  a  few  thousand  years  we 
t  away  from  the  sight  of  this  new  invalid,  of  "a 
sinner" — shall  we  ever  get  away  from  it? — wherever  we 
just  look,  everywhere  the  hypnotic  gaze  of  the  sinner 
always  moving  in  one  direction  (in  the  direction  of  guilt, 
the  Old  i  .iuse  of  suffering) ;  everywhere  the  evil  con- 
science, this  "greuliche  T/iicr,"*  to  use  Luther's  language; 
everywhere  rumination  over  the  past,  a  distorted  view 
of  action,  the  eaze  of  the  "green-eyed  monster"  turned  on 
all  action:  everywhere  the  wilful  misunderstanding  of 
Buffering,  its  transvaluation  into  feelings  of  guilt,  fear  of 
retribution;  everywhere  the  scourge,  the  hairy  shirt,  the 
starving  body,  contrition;  everywhere  the  sinner  break- 


'1  [orrible  b* 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  i$ j 

ing  himself  on  the  ghastly  wheel  of  a  restless  and  mor- 
bidly eager  conscience;  everywhere  mute  pain,  extreme 
fear,  the  agony  of  a  tortured  heart,  the  spasms  of  an 
unknown  happiness,  the  shriek  for  "redemption."  In 
point  of  fact,  thanks  to  this  system  of  procedure,  the 
old  depression,  dullness,  and  fatigue  were  absolutely  con- 
quered, life  itself  became  very  interesting  again,  awake, 
eternally  awake,  sleepless,  glowing,  burnt  away,  exhausted 
and  yet  not  tired — such  was  the  figure  cut  by  man,  "the 
sinner,"  who  was  initiated  into  these  mysteries.  This 
grand  old  wizard  of  an  ascetic  priest  fighting  with  de- 
pression— he  had  clearly  triumphed,  his  kingdom  had 
come:  men  no  longer  grumbled  at  pain,  men  panted  after 
pain:  "More  pain!  More  pain!"  So  for  centuries  on 
end  shrieked  the  demand  of  his  acolytes  and  initiates. 
Every  emotional  excess  which  hurt;  everything  which 
broke,  overthrew,  crushed,  transported,  ravished;  the 
nvystery  of  torture-chambers,  the  ingenuity  of  hell  itself — 
all  this  was  now  discovered,  divined,  exploited,  all  this 
was  at  the  service  of  the  wizard,  all  this  served  to  pro- 
mote the  triumph  of  his  ideal,  the  ascetic  ideal.  "My 
kingdom  is  not  of  this  world,"  quoth  he,  both  at  the  be- 
ginning and  at  the  end:  had  he  still  the  right  to  talk  like 
that? — Goethe  has  maintained  that  there  are  only  thirty- 
six  tragic  situations:  we  would  infer  from  that,  did  we 
not  know  otherwise,  that  Goethe  was  no  ascetic  priest.  He 
— knows  more. 


21. 


So  far  as  all  this  kind  of  priestly  medicine-mongering,' 


1 54  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

the  "guilty"  kind,  is  concerned,  every  word  of  criticism 

superfluous.  As  for  the  suggestion  that  emotional 
excess  of  the  type,  which  in  these  cases  the  ascetic  priest 
is  fain  to  order  to  his  sick  patients  (under  the  most  sacred 

.hemism,  as  is  obvious,  and  equally  impregnated  with 
the  sanctity  of  his  purpose),  has  ever  really  been  of  use 
to  any  sick  man,  who,  forsooth,  would  feel  inclined  to 
maintain  a  proposition  of  that  character?  At  any  rate, 
some  understanding  should  be  come  to  as  to  the  expres- 
sion "be  of  use."  If  you  only  wish  to  express  that  such 
a  system  of  treatment  has  reformed  man,  I  do  not  gain- 
say it:  I  merely  add  that  "reformed"  conveys  to  my  mind 
much  as  "tamed,"  "weakened,"  "discouraged,"  "refined," 
daintified,"  "emasculated"  (and  thus  it  means  almost  as 
much  as  injured).  But  when  you  have  to  deal  princi- 
pally with  sick,  depressed,  and  oppressed  creatures,  such 
a  system,  even  granted  that  it  makes  the  ill  "better," 
under  any  circumstances  also  makes  them  more  ill:  ask 
the  mad-doctors  the  invariable  result  of  a  methodical 
application  of  penance-torture,  contritions,  and  salvation 

tasies.  Similarly  ask  history.  In  every  body  politic 
where  the  ascetic  priest  has  established  this  treatment  of 
the  sick,  disease  has  on  every  occasion  spread  with  sin- 
ister  speed  throughout  its  length  and  breadth.  What 
was  always  the  "result"?  A  shattered  nervous  system, 
in  addition  to  the  existing  malady,  and  this  in  the  greatest 

in  the  smallest,  in  the  individuals  as  in  masses.  We 
find,  in  consequence  of  the  penance  and  redemption- 
training,  awful  epileptic  epidemics,  the  greatest  known  to 
history,  such  as  the  St.  Vitus  and  St.  John  dances  of  the 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  155 

Middle  Ages;  we  find,  as  another  phase  of  its  after- 
effect, frightful  mutilations  and  chronic  depressions,  by 
means  of  which  the  temperament  of  a  nation  or  a  city 
(Geneva,  Bale)  is  turned  once  for  all  into  its  opposite; — 
this  training,  again,  is  responsible  for  the  witch-hysteria, 
a  phenomenon  analogous  to  somnambulism  (eight  great 
epidemic  outbursts  of  this  only  between  1564  and  1605) ; 
— we  find  similarly  in  its  train  those  delirious  death- 
cravings  of  large  masses,  whose  awful  "shriek,"  "evviva 
la  morte!"  was  heard  over  the  whole  of  Europe,  now 
interrupted  by  voluptuous  variations  and  anon  by  a  rage 
for  destruction,  just  as  the  same  emotional  sequence  with 
the  same  intermittencies  and  sudden  changes  is  now  uni- 
versally observed  in  every  case  where  the  ascetic  doc- 
trine of  sin  scores  once  more  a  great  success  (religious 
neurosis  appears  as  a  manifestation  of  the  devil,  there 
is  no  doubt  of  it.  What  is  it?  Quceritur) .  Speaking  gen- 
erally, the  ascetic  ideal  and  its  sublime-moral  cult,  this 
most  ingenious,  reckless,  and  perilous  systematisation  of 
all  methods  of  emotional  excess,  is  writ  large  in  a  dreadful 
and  unforgettable  fashion  on  the  whole  history  of  man, 
and  unfortunately  not  only  on  history.  I  was  scarcely 
able  to  put  forward  any  other  element  which  attacked  the 
health  and  race  efficiency  of  Europeans  with  more  de- 
structive power  than  did  this  ideal;  it  can  be  dubbed, 
without  exaggeration,  the  real  fatality  in  the  history  of 
the  health  of  the  European  man.  At  the  most  you  can 
merely  draw  a  comparison  with  the  specifically  German 
influence:  I  mean  the  alcohol  poisoning  of  Europe,  which 
up  to  the  present  has  kept  pace  exactly  with  the  political 
and  racial  predominance  of  the  Germans   (where  they 


THE  GEXEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

inoculated  their  blood,  there  too  did  they  inoculate  their 
vice).  Third  in  the  series  cornes  syphilis — magno  sed 
proximo  intcrvallo. 


22. 


The  ascetic  priest  has,  wherever  he  has  obtained  the 
mastery,  corrupted  the  health  of  the  soul,  he  has  conse- 
quently  also   corrupted   taste  in  artibus   et   litteris — he 
corrupts  it  still.     "Consequently?"     I  hope  I  shall  be 
granted  this  "consequently";  at  any  rate,  I  am  not  going 
to  prove  it  first.    One  solitary  indication,  it  concerns  the 
arch-book  of  Christian  literature,  their  real  model,  their 
"book-in-itself."    In  the  very  midst  of  the  Grseco-Roman 
splendour,  which  was  also  a  splendour  of  books,  face  to 
face  with  an  ancient  world  of  writings  which  had  not 
yet  fallen  into  decay  and  ruin,  at  a  time  when  certain 
books  were  still  to  be  read,  to  possess  which  we  would 
give  nowadays  half  our  literature  in  exchange,  at  that 
time  the  simplicity  and  vanity  of  Christian  agitators  (they 
are  generally  called  Fathers  of  the  Church)  dared  to  de- 
clare: "We  too  have  our  classical  literature,  we  do  Jiot 
7icr<!  that  oj  the  Greeks" — and  meanwhile  they  proudly 
pointed  to  their  books  of  legends,  their  letters  of  apostles, 
and  their  apologetic  tractlets,  just  in  the  same  way  that 
to-day   the   English   "Salvation   Army"   wages   its   fight 
unst  Shakespeare  and  other  "heathens"  with  an  analo- 
us  literature     You  already  guess  it,  I  do  not  like  the 
restament";  it  almost  upsets  me  that  I  stand  so 
isolated  in  my  taste  so  far  as  concerns  this  valued,  this 
Blued  Scripture;  the  taste  of  two  thousand  years  is 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  157 

against  me;  but  what  boots  it!  "Here  I  stand!  I  can- 
not help  myself"  * — I  have  the  courage  of  my  bad  taste. 
The  Old  Testament — yes,  that  is  something  quite  dif- 
ferent, all  honour  to  the  Old  Testament!  I  find  therein 
great  men,  an  heroic  landscape,  and  one  of  the  rarest 
phenomena  in  the  world,  the  incomparable  naivete  of  the 
strong  heart;  further  still,  I  find  a  people.  In  the  New, 
on  the  contrary,  just  a  hostel  of  petty  sects,  pure  rococo 
of  the  soul,  twisting  angles  and  fancy  touches,  nothing 
but  conventicle  air,  not  to  forget  an  occasional  whiff  of 
bucolic  sweetness  which  appertains  to  the  epoch  (and  the 
Roman  province)  and  is  less  Jewish  than  Hellenistic. 
Meekness  and  braggadocio  cheek  by  jowl;  an  emotional 
garrulousness  that  almost  deafens;  passionate  hysteria, 
but  no  passion ;  painful  pantomime ;  here  manifestly  every 
one  lacked  good  breeding.  How  dare  any  one  make  so 
much  fuss  about  their  little  failings  as  do  these  pious 
little  fellows!  No  one  cares  a  straw  about  it— let  alone 
God.  Finally  they  actually  wish  to  have  "the  crown  of 
eternal  life,"  do  all  these  little  provincials!  In  return  for 
what,  in  sooth?  For  what  end?  It  is  impossible  to  carry 
insolence  any  further.  An  immortal  Peter!  who  could 
stand  him!  They  have  an  ambition  which  makes  one 
laugh:  the  thing  dishes  up  cut  and  dried  his  most  personal 
life,  his  melancholies,  and  common-or-garden  troubles,  as 
though  the  Universe  itself  were  under  an  obligation  to 
bother  itself  about  them,  for  it  never  gets  tired  of  wrap- 
ping up  God  Himself  in  the  petty  misery  in  which  its 


*  "Here  I  stand!  I  cannot  help  myself.  God  help  me! 
Amen" — were  Luther's  words  before  the  Reichstag  at  Worms. 
— H.  B.  S. 


158  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

troubles  are  involved.    And  how  about  the  atrocious  form 
of  this  chronic  hobnobbing  with  God?    This  Jewish,  and 
not  merely  Jewish,  slobbering  and  clawing  importunacy 
towards    God!— There    exist    little    despised    "heathen 
nations''  in  East  Africa,  from  whom  these  first  Christians 
could  have  learnt  something  worth  learning,  a  little  tact 
in  worshipping;  these  nations  do  not  allow  themselves  to 
say  aloud  the  name  of  their  God.     This  seems  to  me 
delicate  enough,  it  is  certain  that  it  is  too  delicate,  and 
not  only  for  primitive  Christians;  to  take  a  contrast,  just 
recollect  Luther,  the  most  "eloquent"  and  insolent  peasant 
whom  Germany  has  had,  think  of  the  Lutherian  tone,  in 
which  he  felt  quite  the  most  in  his  element  during  his 
-a-titcs  with  God.     Luther's  opposition  to  the  medi- 
al saints  of  the  Church  (in  particular,  against  "that 
devil's  hog,  the  Pope"),  was,  there  is  no  doubt,  at  bottom 
the  opposition  of  a  boor,  who  was  offended  at  the  good 
of  the   Church,   that  worship-etiquette  of  the 
sacerdotal  code,  which  only  admits  to  the  holy  of  holies 
the  initiated  and  the  silent,  and  shuts  the  door  against 
the  boors.     These  definitely  were  not  to  be  allowed  a 
hearinir  in  this  planet — but  Luther  the  peasant  simply 
it  otherwise;  as  it  was,  it  was  not  German  enough 
for  him.     He  personally  wished  himself  to  talk  direct,  to 
nally,  to  talk  "straight  from  the  shoulder"  with 
his  God.    Well,  he's  done  it.    The  ascetic  ideal,  you  will 
gui  at  no  time  and  in  no  place,  a  school  of  good 

-  of  good  manners — at  the  best  it  was  a 
school  lor  sacerdotal  manners:  that  is.  it  contains  in 
itself  something  which  was  a  deadly  enemy  to  all  good 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  159 

manners.     Lack  of  measure,  opposition  to  measure  it  is 
itself  a  "non  plus  ultra." 

23- 

The  ascetic  ideal  has  corrupted  not  only  health  and 
taste,  there  are  also  third,  fourth,  fifth,  and  sixth  things 
which  it  has  corrupted — I  shall  take  care  not  to  go  through 
the  catalogue  (when  should  I  get  to  the  end?).  I  have 
here  to  expose  not  what  this  ideal  effected;  but  rather 
only  what  it  means,  on  what  it  is  based,  what  lies  lurk- 
ing behind  it  and  under  it,  that  of  which  it  is  the  pro- 
visional expression,  an  obscure  expression  bristling  with 
queries  and  misunderstandings.  And  with  this  object 
only  in  view  I  presumed  "not  to  spare"  my  readers  a 
glance  at  the  awfulness  of  its  results,  a  glance  at  its  fatal 
results;  I  did  this  to  prepare  them  for  the  final  and  most 
awful  aspect  presented  to  me  by  the  question  of  the 
significance  of  that  ideal.  What  is  the  significance  of  the 
power  of  that  ideal,  the  monstrousness  of  its  power?  Why 
is  it  given  such  an  amount  of  scope?  Why  is  not  a  better 
resistance  offered  against  it?  The  ascetic  ideal  expresses 
one  will:  where  is  the  opposition  will,  in  which  an  opposi- 
tion ideal  expresses  itself?  The  ascetic  ideal  has  an  aim 
— this  goal  is,  putting  it  generally,  that  all  the  other 
interests  of  human  life  should,  measured  by  its  standard, 
appear  petty  and  narrow;  it  explains  epochs,  nations,  men, 
in  reference  to  this  one  end;  it  forbids  any  other  inter- 
pretation, any  other  end;  it  repudiates,  denies,  affirms, 
confirms,  only  in  the  sense  of  its  own  interpretation  (and 


160  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

there  ever  a  more  thoroughly  elaborated  system  of 
interpretation?) ;  it  subjects  itself  to  no  power,  rather  does 
it  believe  in  its  own  precedence  over  every  power— it 
believes  that  nothing  powerful  exists  in  the  world  that 
has  not  first  got  to  receive  from  "it"  a  meaning,  a  right 
to  exist,  a  value,  as  being  an  instrument  in  its  work,  a 
way  and  means  to  its  end,  to  one  end.  Where  is  the 
counterpart  of  this  complete  system  of  will,  end,  and 
interpretation?  Why  is  the  counterpart  lacking?  Where 
is  the  other  "one  aim"?  But  I  am  told  it  is  not  lacking, 
that  not  only  has  it  fought  a  long  and  fortunate  fight 
with  that  ideal,  but  that  further  it  has  already  won  the 
mastery  over  that  ideal  in  all  essentials:  let  our  whole 
modern  science  attest  this — that  modern  science,  which, 
like  the  genuine  reality-philosophy  which  it  is,  manifestly 
believes  in  itself  alone,  manifestly  has  the  courage  to  be 
itself,  the  will  to  be  itself,  and  has  got  on  well  enough 
without  God,  another  world,  and  negative  virtues. 

With   all    their  noisy   agitator-babble,   however,    they 
effect  nothing  with  me;   these  trumpeters  of  reality  are 
bad  musicians,  their  voices  do  not  come  from  the  deeps 
with  sufficient  audibility,  they  are  not  the  mouthpiece  for 
the  abyss  of  scientific  knowledge — for  to-day  scientific 
knowledge   is   an    abyss — the   word   "science,"    in    such 
trumpeter-mouths,  is  a  prostitution,  an  abuse,  an  imper- 
tinence.   The  truth  is  just  the  opposite  from  what  is  main- 
tained in  the  ascetic  theory.     Science  has  to-day  abso- 
lutely no  belief  in  itself,  let  alone  in  an  ideal  superior  to 
Itself,  and  wherever  science  still  consists  of  passion,  love, 
ardour,  suffering  it  is  not  the  opposition  to  that  ascetic 
ideal,  but  rather  the  incarnation  of  its  latest  and  noblest 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  161 

form.  Does  that  ring  strange?  There  are  enough  brave 
and  decent  working  people,  even  among  the  learned  men 
of  to-day,  who  like  their  little  corner,  and  who,  just  be- 
cause they  are  pleased  so  to  do,  become  at  times  inde- 
cently loud  with  their  demand,  that  people  to-day  should 
be  quite  content,  especially  in  science — for  in  science  there 
is  so  much  useful  work  to  do.  I  do  not  deny  it — there 
is  nothing  I  should  like  less  than  to  spoil  the  delight  of 
these  honest  workers  in  their  handiwork;  for  I  rejoice 
in  their  work.  But  the  fact  of  science  requiring  hard 
work,  the  fact  of  its  having  contented  workers,  is  abso- 
lutely no  proof  of  science  as  a  whole  having  to-day  one 
end,  one  will,  one  ideal,  one  passion  for  a  great  faith;  the 
contrary,  as  I  have  said,  is  the  case.  When  science  is  not 
the  latest  manifestation  of  the  ascetic  ideal — but  these 
are  cases  of  such  rarity,  selectness,  and  exquisiteness,  as  to 
preclude  the  general  judgment  being  affected  thereby — 
science  is  a  hiding-place  for  every  kind  of  cowardice, 
disbelief,  remorse,  despectio  sui,  bad  conscience — it  is  the 
very  anxiety  that  springs  from  having  no  ideal,  the  suf- 
fering from  the  lack  of  a  great  love,  the  discontent  with 
an  enforced  moderation.  Oh,  what  does  all  science  nof 
cover  to-day?  How  much,  at  any  rate,  does  it  not  try 
to  cover?  The  diligence  of  our  best  scholars,  their  sense- 
less industry,  their  burning  the  candle  of  their  brain  at 
both  ends — their  very  mastery  in  their  handiwork — how 
often  is  the  real  meaning  of  all  that  to  prevent  themselves 
continuing  to  see  a  certain  thing?  Science  as  a  self- 
anaesthetic:  do  you  know  that?  You  wound  them — every 
one  who  consorts  with  scholars  experiences  this — you 
wound  them  sometimes  to  the  quick  through  just  a  harm- 


1 62  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

..rd;  when  you  think  you  are  paying  them  a  compli- 
ment you  embitter  them  beyond  all  bounds,  simply  be- 
cause you  didn't  ha\e  the  finesse  to  infer  the  real  kind 
of  customers  you  had  to  tackle,  the  sufferer  kind  (who 
n't  own  up  even  to  themselves  what  they  really  are), 
the  dazed  and  unconscious  kind  who  have  only  one  fear — 
coming  to  consciousness. 

24. 

And  now  look  at  the  other  side,  at  those  rare  cases,  of 
which  I  spoke,  the  most  supreme  idealists  to  be  found 
nowadays  among  philosophers  and  scholars.  Have  we, 
perchance,  found  in  them  the  sought-for  opponents  of  the 
ascetic  ideal,  its  arti-idcalists?  In  fact,  they  believe  them- 
selves to  be  such,  these  "unbelievers"  (for  they  are  all 
of  them  that) :  it  seems  that  this  idea  is  their  last  rem- 
nant of  faith,  the  idea  of  being  opponents  of  this  ideal, 
so  earnest  are  they  on  this  subject,  so  passionate  in  word 
and  gesture; — but  does  it  follow  diat  what  they  believe 
must  necessarily  be  trite?    We  "knowers"  have  grown  by 

,'rees  suspicious  of  all  kinds  of  believers,  our  suspicion 
has  step  by  step  habituated  us  to  draw  just  the  opposite 
conclusions  to  what  people  have  drawn  before;  that  is  to 
say,  wherever  the  strength  of  a  belief  is  particularly  prom- 
inent to  draw  the  conclusion  of  the  difficulty  of  proving 
what  is  believed,  the  conclusion  of  its  actual  improbability. 
We  do  Dot  again  deny  that  "faith  produces  salvation'':  for 
that  very  reason  we  do  deny  that  faith  proves  anything, — 
a  strong  faith,  which  produces  happiness,  causes  suspicion 
of  the  object  of  that  faith,  it  does  not  establish  its  "truth," 
it  d  ablish  a  certain  probability  of — illusion.    What 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  163 

is  now  the  position  in  these  cases?  These  solitaries  and 
deniers  of  to-day;  these  fanatics  in  one  thing,  in  their 
claim  to  intellectual  cleanness;  these  hard,  stern,  contin- 
ent, heroic  spirits,  who  constitute  the  glory  of  our  time; 
all  these  pale  atheists,  anti-Christians,  immoralists,  Nihi- 
lists; these  sceptics,  "ephectics,"  and  "hectics"  of  the  in- 
tellect (in  a  certain  sense  they  are  the  latter,  both  collec- 
tively and  individually) ;  these  supreme  idealists  of  knowl- 
edge, in  whom  alone  nowadays  the  intellectual  conscience 
dwells  and  is  alive — in  point  of  fact  they  believe  them- 
selves as  far  away  as  possible  from  the  ascetic  ideal,  do 
these  "free,  very  free  spirits":  and  yet,  if  I  may  reveal 
what  they  themselves  cannot  see — for  they  stand  too  near 
themselves:  this  ideal  is  simply  their  ideal,  they  represent 
it  nowadays  and  perhaps  no  one  else,  they  themselves  are 
its  most  spiritualised  product,  its  most  advanced  picket 
of  skirmishers  and  scouts,  its  most  insidious  delicate  and 
elusive  form  of  seduction. — If  I  am  in  any  way  a  reader  of 
riddles,  then  I  will  be  one  with  this  sentence:  for  some 
time  past  there  have  been  no  free  spirits;  for  they  still 
believe  in  truth.  When  the  Christian  Crusaders  in  the 
East  came  into  collision  with  that  invincible  order  of  as- 
sassins, that  order  of  free  spirits  par  excellence,  whose 
lowest  grade  lives  in  a  state  of  discipline  such  as  no  order 
of  monks  has  ever  attained,  then  in  some  way  or  other 
they  managed  to  get  an  inkling  of  that  symbol  and  tally- 
word,  that  was  reserved  for  the  highest  grade  alone  as  their 
secretum,  "Nothing  is  true,  everything  is  allowed," — in 
sooth,  that  was  freedom  of  thought,  thereby  was  taking 
leave  of  the  very  belief  in  truth.  Has  indeed  any  Euro- 
pean, any  Christian  freethinker,  ever  yet  wandered  into 


1 64  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

this  proposition  and  its  labyrinthine  consequences?  Does 
he  know  from  experience  the  Minotauros  of  this  den. — I 
doubt  it — nay,  I  know  otherwise.  Nothing  is  more  really 
alien  to  these  "monofanatics,"  these  so-called  "free  spir- 
its," than  freedom  and  unfettering  in  that  sense;  in  no 
pect  are  they  more  closely  tied,  the  absolute  fanaticism 
of  their  belief  in  truth  is  unparalleled.  I  know  all  this 
perhaps  too  much  from  experience  at  close  quarters — that 
dignified  philosophic  abstinence  to  which  a  belief  like  that 
binds  its  adherents,  that  stoicism  of  the  intellect,  which 
eventually  vetoes  negation  as  rigidly  as  it  does  affirmation, 
that  wish  for  standing  still  in  front  of  the  actual,  the 
factum  brutum,  that  fatalism  in  ''pctits  ja;ts"  (ce  petit 
jaitalism,  as  I  call  it),  in  which  French  Science  now  at- 
tempts a  kind  of  moral  superiority  over  German,  this  re- 
nunciation of  interpretation  generally  (that  is,  of  forcing, 
doctoring,  abridging,  omitting,  suppressing,  inventing,  fal- 
sifying, and  all  the  other  essential  attributes  of  interpre- 
tation)— all  this,  considered  broadly,  expresses  the  asceti- 
cism of  virtue,  quite  as  efficiently  as  does  any  repudiation 
of  the  senses  (it  is  at  bottom  only  a  modus  of  that  repudi- 
ation). Hut  what  forces  it  into  that  unqualified  will  for 
truth  is  the  faith  in  the  ascetic  ideal  itself,  even  though  it 
take  the  form  of  its  unconscious  imperatives, — make  no 
mistake  about  it,  it  is  the  faith,  I  repeat,  in  a  mctaphysi- 
'  value,  an  intrinsic  value  of  truth,  of  a  character  which 
only  warranted  and  guaranteed  in  this  ideal  (it  stands 
and  falls  with  that  ideal).  Judged  strictly,  there  does  not 
t  a  science  without  its  "hypotheses,"  the  thought  of 
<nce  is  inconceivable,  illogical:  a  philosophy,  a 
faith,  must  always  exist  first  to  enable  science  to  gain 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  165 

thereby  a  direction,  a  meaning,  a  limit  and  method,  a  rigid 
to  existence.  (He  who  holds  a  contrary  opinion  on  the 
subject — he,  for  example,  who  takes  it  upon  himself  to 
establish  philosophy  "upon  a  strictly  scientific  basis" — has 
first  got  to  "turn  upside-down"  not  only  philosophy  but 
also  truth  itself — the  gravest  insult  which  could  possibly 
be  offered  to  two  such  respectable  females!)  Yes,  there 
is  no  doubt  about  it — and  here  I  quote  my  Joyful  Wis- 
dom, cp.  Book  V.  Aph.  344:  "The  man  who  is  truthful 
in  that  daring  and  extreme  fashion,  which  is  the  presup- 
position of  the  faith  in  science,  asserts  thereby  a  different 
world  from  that  of  life,  nature,  and  history;  and  in  so  far 
as  he  asserts  the  existence  of  that  different  world,  come, 
must  he  not  similarly  repudiate  its  counterpart,  this  world, 
our  world?  The  belief  on  which  our  faith  in  science  is 
based  has  remained  to  this  day  a  metaphysical  belief — 
even  we  knowers  of  to-day,  we  godless  foes  of  metaphysics, 
we,  too,  take  our  fire  from  that  conflagration  which  was 
kindled  by  a  thousand-year-old  faith,  from  that  Christian 
belief,  which  was  also  Plato's  belief,  the  belief  that  God 
is  truth,  that  truth  is  divine.  .  .  .  But  what  if  this  belief 
becomes  more  and  more  incredible,  what  if  nothing  proves 
itself  to  be  divine,  unless  it  be  error,  blindness,  lies — 
what  if  God  Himself  proved  Himself  to  be  our  oldest  lie?" 
— It  is  necessary  to  stop  at  this  point  and  to  consider  the 
situation  carefully.  Science  itself  now  needs  a  justification 
(which  is  not  for  a  minute  to  say  that  there  is  such  a 
justification).  Turn  in  this  context  to  the  most  ancient 
and  the  most  modern  philosophers:  they  all  fail  to  realise 
the  extent  of  the  need  of  a  justification  on  the  part  of  the 
Will  for  Truth — here  is  a  gap  in  every  philosophy — what 


1 66  THE  GEXEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

b  it  caused  by?  Because  up  to  the  present  the  ascetic 
ideal  dominated  all  philosophy,  because  Truth  was  fixed 
as  Being,  as  God,  as  the  Supreme  Court  of  Appeal,  because 
Truth  was  not  allowed  to  be  a  problem.  Do  you  under- 
stand this  "allowed"?  From  the  minute  that  the  belief 
in  the  God  of  the  ascetic  ideal  is  repudiated,  there  exists 
a  ncd)  problem:  the  problem  of  the  value  of  truth.  The 
Will  for  Truth  needed  a  critique— let  us  define  by  these 
rds  our  own  task — the  value  of  truth  is  tentatively 
to  be  called  in  question.  ...  (If  this  seems  too  laconic- 
ally expressed,  I  recommend  the  reader  to  peruse  again 
that  passage  from  the  Joyful  Wisdom  which  bears  the 
title,  ''How  far  we  also  are  still  pious,"  Aph.  344,  and 
best  of  all  the  whole  fifth  book  of  that  work,  as  well  as 
the  Preface  to  The  Dawn  0}  Day. 

25- 

Nol  You  can't  get  round  me  with  science,  when  I 
search  for  the  natural  antagonists  of  the  ascetic  ideal, 
when  I  put  the  question:  "Where  is  the  opposed  will  in 
which  the  opponent  ideal  expresses  itself?"  Science  is 
not.  by  2  long  way,  independent  enough  to  fulfil  this 
function ;  in  every  department  science  needs  an  ideal  value, 
a  power  which  creates  values,  and  in  whose  service  it  can 
in  itself — science  itself  never  creates  values.  Its 
relation  to  the  ascetic  ideal  is  not  in  itself  antagonistic: 

•  iking  roughly,  it  rather  represents  the  progressive  force 

in  the  inner  evolution  of  that  ideal.    Tested  more  exactly, 

lion  and  antagonism  are  concerned  not  with  the 

[deal  itself,  but  only  with  that  ideal's  outworks,  its  outer 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  167 

garb,  its  masquerade,  with  its  temporary  hardening,  stif- 
fening, and  dogmatising — it  makes  the  life  in  the  ideal 
free  once  more,  while  it  repudiates  its  superficial  elements. 
These  two  phenomena,  science  and  the  ascetic  ideal,  both 
rest  on  the  same  basis — I  have  already  made  this  clear — 
the  basis,  I  say,  of  the  same  over-appreciation  of  truth 
(more  accurately  the  same  belief  in  the  impossibility  of 
valuing  and  of  criticising  truth),  and  consequently  they 
are  necessarily  allies,  so  that,  in  the  event  of  their  being 
attacked,  they  must  always  be  attacked  and  called  into 
question  together.  A  valuation  of  the  ascetic  ideal  inevi- 
tably entails  a  valuation  of  science  as  well;  lose  no  time 
in  seeing  this  clearly,  and  be  sharp  to  catch  it!  {Art,  I 
am  speaking  provisionally,  for  I  will  treat  it  on  some  other 
occasion  in  greater  detail, — art,  I  repeat,  in  which  lying 
is  sanctified  and  the  will  for  deception  has  good  conscience 
on  its  side,  is  much  more  fundamentally  opposed  to  the 
ascetic  ideal  than  is  science:  Plato's  instinct  felt  this — 
Plato,  the  greatest  enemy  of  art  which  Europe  has  pro- 
duced up  to  the  present.  Plato  versus  Homer,  that  is  the 
complete,  the  true  antagonism — on  the  one  side,  the  whole- 
hearted "transcendental,"  the  great  defamer  of  life;  on  the 
other,  its  involuntary  panegyrist,  the  golden  nature.  An 
artistic  subservience  to  the  service  of  the  ascetic  ideal  is 
consequently  the  most  absolute  artistic  corruption  that 
there  can  be,  though  unfortunately  it  is  one  of  the  most 
frequent  phases,  for  nothing  is  more  corruptible  than  an 
artist.)  Considered  physiologically,  moreover,  science 
rests  on  the  same  basis  as  does  the  ascetic  ideal :  a  certain 
impoverishment  0}  life  is  the  presupposition  of  the  latter 
as  of  the  former— add,  frigidity  of  the  emotions,  slacken- 


1 68  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

ing  of  the  tempo,  the  substitution  of  dialectic  for  instinct, 
usncss  impressed  on  mien  and  gesture  (seriousness, 
that  most  unmistakable  sign  of  strenuous  metabolism,  of 
Struggling,  toiling  life).  Consider  the  periods  in  a  nation 
in  which  the  learned  man  comes  into  prominence;  they 
are  the  periods  of  exhaustion,  often  of  sunset,  of  decay — 
the  effervescing  strength,  the  confidence  in  life,  the  confi- 
dence in  the  future  are  no  more.  The  preponderence  of 
the  mandarins  never  signifies  any  good,  any  more  than 
does  the  advent  of  democracy,  or  arbitration  instead  of 
war,  equal  rights  for  women,  the  religion  of  pity,  and  all 
the  other  symptoms  of  declining  life.  (Science  handled  as 
a  problem!  what  is  the  meaning  of  science? — upon  this 
point  the  Treface  to  the  Birth  of  Tragedy.)  No!  this 
"modern  science" — mark  you  this  well — is  at  times  the 
best  ally  for  the  ascetic  ideal,  and  for  the  very  reason  that 
it  is  the  ally  which  is  most  unconscious,  most  automatic, 
most  secret,  and  most  subterranean!  They  have  been 
playing  into  each  other's  hands  up  to  the  present,  have 
these  "poor  in  spirit"  and  the  scientific  opponents  of  that 
ideal  (take  care,  by  the  bye,  not  to  think  that  these  op- 
ponents are  the  antithesis  of  this  ideal,  that  they  are  the 
rich  in  spirit — that  they  are  not;  I  have  called  them  the 
luetic  in  spirit).  As  for  these  celebrated  victories  of 
science;  there  is  no  doubt  that  they  are  victories — but  vic- 
tories over  what?  There  was  not  for  a  single  minute  any 
victory  among  their  list  over  the  ascetic  ideal,  rather  was 
it  made  stronger,  that  is  to  say,  more  elusive,  more  ab- 
stract, more  insidious,  from  the  fact  that  a  wall,  an  out- 
work, that  had  got  built  on  to  the  main  fortress  and 
disfigured  its  appearance,  should  from  time  to  time  be 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  169 

ruthlessly  destroyed  and  broken  down  by  science.  Does 
any  one  seriously  suggest  that  the  downfall  of  the  theologi- 
cal astronomy  signified  the  downfall  of  that  ideal? — Has, 
perchance,  man  grown  less  in  need  of  a  transcendental  so- 
lution of  his  riddle  of  existence,  because  since  that  time  this 
existence  has  become  more  random,  casual,  and  superflu- 
ous in  the  visible  order  of  the  universe?  Has  there  not 
been  since  the  time  of  Copernicus  an  unbroken  progress 
in  the  self-belittling  of  man  and  his  will  for  belittling  him- 
self? Alas,  his  belief  in  his  dignity,  his  uniqueness,  his 
irreplaceableness  in  the  scheme  of  existence,  is  gone — 
he  has  become  animal,  literal,  unqualified,  and  unmiti- 
gated animal,  he  who  in  his  earlier  belief  was  almost  God 
("child  of  God,"  "demi-God").  Since  Copernicus  man 
seems  to  have  fallen  on  to  a  steep  plane — he  rolls  faster 
and  faster  away  from  the  centre — whither?  into  nothing- 
ness? into  the  "thrilling  sensation  of  his  own  nothingness"? 
— Well!  this  would  be  the  straight  way — to  the  old  ideal? 
— All  science  (and  by  no  means  only  astronomy,  with  re- 
gard to  the  humiliating  and  deteriorating  effect  of  which 
Kant  has  made  a  remarkable  confession,  "it  annihilates  my 
own  importance"),  all  science,  natural  as  much  as  un- 
natural—-by  unnatural  I  mean  the  self-critique  of  reason 
— nowadays  sets  out  to  talk  man  out  of  his  present  opinion 
of  himself,  as  though  that  opinion  had  been  nothing  but 
a  bizarre  piece  of  conceit;  you  might  go  so  far  as  to  say 
that  science  finds  its  peculiar  pride,  its  peculiar  bitter 
form  of  stoical  ataraxia,  in  preserving  man's  contempt  0} 
himself,  that  state  which  it  took  so  much  trouble  to  bring 
about,  as  man's  final  and  most  serious  claim  to  self-appre- 
ciation (rightly  so,  in  point  of  fact,  for  he  who  despises 


1 7o  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

is  always  "one  who  has  not  forgotten  how  to  appreciate"). 
But  does  all  this  involve  any  real  effort  to  counteract  the 
ascetic  ideal?    Is  it  really  seriously  suggested  that  Kant's 
victory  over   the   theological    dogmatism   about   "God," 
"Soul,"   "Freedom,"   "Immortality,"   has   damaged   that 
ideal  in  any  way  (as  the  theologians  have  imagined  to  be 
the  case  for  a  long  time  past)? — And  in  this  connection 
it  does  not  concern  us  for  a  single  minute,  if  Kant  him- 
self intended  any  such  consummation.     It  is  certain  that 
from  the  time  of  Kant  every  type  of  transcendental ist  is 
playing  a  winning  game — they  are  emancipated  from  the 
theologians;   what  luck! — he  has  revealed  to  them  that 
secret  art,  by  which  they  can  now  pursue  their  "heart's 
desire"  on  their  own  responsibility,  and  with  all  the  respec- 
tability of  science.     Similarly,  who  can  grumble  at  the 
agnostics,  reverers,  as  they  are,  of  the  unknown  and  the 
absolute  mystery,  if  they  now  worship  their  very  query 
as  God?     (Xaver  Doudan  talks  somewhere  of  the  ravages 
which  V habitude  d'admirer  I'inintelligible  au  lieu  de  rester 
tout     simplcmcnt     dans    Vinconnu    has     produced — the 
ancients,  he  thinks,  must  have  been  exempt  from  those 
ravages.)     Supposing  that  everything,  "known"  to  man, 
fails  to  satisfy  his  desires,  and  on  the  contrary  contradicts 
and  horrifies  them,  what  a  divine  way  out  of  all  this  to  be 
able  to  look  for  the  responsibility,  not  in  the  "desiring" 
but    in   "knowing"! — "There   is  no   knowledge.      Conse- 
quently    there  is  a  God";  what  a  novel  elegantia  syllo 
gismi!  what  a  triumph  for  the  ascetic  ideal! 

26. 

Or,  perchance,  does  the  whole  of  modern  history  show 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  171 

1  its  demeanour  greater  confidence  in  life,  greater  con- 

dence  in  its  ideals?    Its  loftiest  pretension  is  now  to  be 

mirror;  it  repudiates  all  teleology;  it  will  have  no  more 

proving";   it  disdains  to  play  the  judge,  and  thereby 

lows  its  good  taste — it  asserts  as  little  as  it  denies,  it 

xes,  it  "describes."    All  this  is  to  a  high  degree  ascetic, 

ut  at  the  same  time  it  is  to  a  much  greater  degree  nihi- 

stic;  make  no  mistake  about  this!     You  see  in  the  his- 

Drian  a  gloomy,  hard,  but  determined  gaze, — an  eye  that 

ioks  out  as  an  isolated  North  Pole  explorer  looks  out 

perhaps  so  as  not  to  look  within,  so  as  not  to  look  back? ) 

-there  is  snow — here  is  life  silenced,  the  last  crows  which 

aw  here  are  called  "whither?"  "Vanity,"  "Nada" — here 

;Othing  more  flourishes  and  grows,  at  the  most  the  meta- 

lolitics  of  St.  Petersburg  and  the  "pity"  of  Tolstoi.     But 

,s  for  that  other  school  of  historians  a  perhaps  still  more 

modern"  school,  a  voluptuous  and  lascivious  school  which 

•gles  life  and  the  ascetic  ideal  with  equal  fervour,  which 

ises  the  word  "artist"  as  a  glove,  and  has  nowadays  es- 

ablished  a  "corner"  for  itself,  in  all  the  praise  given  to 

:ontemplation ;  oh,  what  a  thirst  do  these  sweet  intellec- 

uals  excite  even  for  ascetics  and  winter  landscapes!    Nay! 

rhe  devil  take  these  "contemplative"  folk!     How  much 

tefer   would    I    wander   with    those   historical    Nihilists 

hrough  the  gloomiest,  grey,  cold  mist! — nay,  I  shall  not 

nind  listening  (supposing  I  have  to  choose)  to  one  who 

3  completely  unhistorical  and  anti-historical  (a  man,  like 

)uhring  for  instance,  over  whose  periods  a  hitherto  shy 

,nd  unavowed  species  of  "beautiful  souls"  has  grown  in- 

oxicated  in  contemporary  Germany,  the  species  anarchis- 

ica  within  the  educated  proletariate).     The  "contempla- 

ive"  are  a  hundred  times  worse — I  never  knew  anything 


,?3  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

which  produced  such  intense  nausea  as  one  of  those  "ob- 
jective" chairs*  one  of  those  scented  mannikins-about- 
town  of  history,  a  thing  half-priest,  half-satyr  (Renan 
parfum),  which  betrays  by  the  high,  shrill  falsetto  of  his 
applause  what  he  lacks  and  where  he  lacks  it,  who  betrays 
where  in  this  case  the  Fates  have  plied  their  ghastly 
shears,  alas:  in  too  surgeon-like  a  fashion!  This  is  dis- 
tasteful to  me,  and  irritates  my  patience;  let  him  keep 
patient  at  such  sights  who  has  nothing  to  lose  thereby, — 
such  a  sight  enrages  me,  such  spectators  embitter  me 
tinst  the  "play,"  even  more  than  does  the  play  itself 
(history  itself,  you  understand);  Anacreontic  moods  im- 
perceptibly come  over  me.  This  Nature,  who  gave  to  the 
10m,  to  the  lion  its  ydo\i'  6§6vrcov,  for  what 
purpose  did  Nature  give  me  my  foot? — To  kick,  by  St. 
Anacreon,  and  not  merely  to  run  away!  To  trample  on 
all  the  worm-eaten  "chairs,"  the  cowardly  contemplators, 
the  lascivious  eunuchs  of  history,  the  flirters  with  ascetic 
ideals,  the  righteous  hypocrites  of  impotence!  All  rever- 
ence on  my  part  to  the  ascetic  ideal,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
hotn'ir  So  long  as  it  believes  in  itself  and  plays  no 

pranks  on  us!  But  I  like  not  all  these  coquettish  bugs 
who  have  an  insatiate  ambition  to  smell  of  the  infinite, 
until  eventually  the  infinite  smells  of  bugs;  1  like  not  the 
whited  sepulchres  with  their  stagey  reproduction  of  life; 
I  like  not  the  tired  and  the  used  up  who  wrap  themselves 
in  wisdom  and  look  "objective";  I  like  not  the  agitators 
dressed  up  bs  heroes,  who  hide  their  dummy-heads  behind 
the  stalking-horse  of  an  ideal;  I  like  not  the  ambitious 
artists  who  would  fain  play  the  ascetic  and  the  priest,  and 


•  E.g.     Lectureships. 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  173 

are  at  bottom  nothing  but  tragic  clowns;  I  like  not,  again, 
these  newest  speculators  in  idealism,  the  Anti-Semites, 
who  nowadays  roll  their  eyes  in  the  patent  Christian- 
Aryan-man-of-honour  fashion,  and  by  an  abuse  of  moral- 
ist attitudes  and  agitation  dodges,  so  cheap  as  to  exhaust 
any  patience,  strive  to  excite  all  the  blockhead  elements 
in  the  populace  (the  invariable  success  of  every  kind  of 
intellectual  charlatanism  in  present-day  Germany  hangs 
together  with  the  almost  indisputable  and  already  quite 
palpable  desolation  of  the  German  mind,  whose  cause  I 
look  for  in  a  too  exclusive  diet,  of  papers,  politics,  beer, 
and  Wagnerian  music,  not  forgetting  the  condition  prece- 
dent of  this  diet,  the  national  exclusiveness  and  vanity,  the 
strong  but  narrow  principle,  "Germany,  Germany  above 
everything,"*  and  finally  the  paralysis  agitans  of  "mod- 
ern ideas").  Europe  nowadays  is,  above  all,  wealthy  and 
ingenious  in  means  of  excitement;  it  apparently  has  no 
more  crying  necessity  than  stimulantia  and  alcohol. 
Hence  the  enormous  counterfeiting  of  ideals,  those  most 
fiery  spirits  of  the  mind;  hence  too  the  repulsive,  evil- 
smelling,  perjured,  pseudo-alcoholic  air  everywhere.  I 
should  like  to  know  how  many  cargoes  of  imitation  ideal- 
ism, of  hero-costumes  and  high  falutin'  clap- trap,  how 
many  casks  of  sweetened  pity  liqueur  (Firm:  la  religion 
de  la  souffrance),  how  many  crutches  of  righteous  indig- 
nation for  the  help  of  these  flat-footed  intellects,  how 
many  comedians  of  the  Christian  moral  ideal  would  need 
to-day  to  be  exported  from  Europe,  to  enable  its  air  to 
smell  pure  again.  It  is  obvious  that,  in  regard  to  this 
over-production,  a  new  trade  possibility  lies  open;  it  is 


*  An  illusion  to  the  well-known  patriotic  song. — H.  B.  S. 


i74  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

obvious  that  there  is  a  new  business  to  be  done  in  little 
ideal  idols  and  obedient  "idealists"— don't  pass  over  this 
tip!  Who  has  sufficient  courage?  We  have  in  our  hands 
the  possibility  of  idealising  the  whole  earth.  But  what 
am  I  talking  about  courage?  we  only  need  one  thing  here 
— a  hand,  a  free,  a  very  free  hand. 

27. 

Enough !  enough !  let  us  leave  these  curiosities  and  com- 
plexities of  the  modern  spirit,  which  excite  as  much  laugh- 
ter as  disgust.  Our  problem  can  certainly  do  without 
them,  the  problem  of  the  meaning  of  the  ascetic  ideal — 
what  has  it  got  to  do  with  yesterday  or  to-day?  those 
things  shall  be  handled  by  me  more  thoroughly  and  se- 
verely in  another  connection  (under  the  title  "A  Contri- 
bution to  the  History  of  European  Nihilism,"  I  refer  for 
this  to  a  work  which  I  am  preparing:  The  Will  to  Power, 
an  Attempt  at  a  Transvaluation  of  All  Values).  The  only 
reason  why  I  come  to  allude  to  it  here  is  this:  the  ascetic 
ideal  has  at  times,  even  in  the  most  intellectual  sphere, 
only  one  real  kind  of  enemies  and  damagers:  these  are 
the  comedians  of  this  ideal — for  they  awake  mistrust, 
•y  where  otherwise,  where  the  mind  is  at  work  seri- 
ously, powerfully,  and  without  counterfeiting,  it  dispenses 
altogether  now  with  an  ideal  (the  popular  expression  for 
this  abstinence  is  "Atheism") — with  the  exception  of  the 
will  jar  truth.  Hut  this  will,  this  remnant  of  an  ideal,  is, 
If  you  will  believe  me,  that  ideal  itself  in  its  severest  and 
I  formulation,  esoteric  through  and  through. 
■tripped  of  all  outworks,  and  consequently  not  so  much 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  175 

its  remnant  as  its  kernel.  Unqualified  honest  atheism 
(and  its  air  only  do  we  breathe,  we,  the  most  intellectual 
men  of  this  age)  is  not  opposed  to  that  ideal,  to  the  extent 
that  it  appears  to  be;  it  is  rather  one  of  the  final  phases 
of  its  evolution,  one  of  its  syllogisms  and  pieces  of  inher- 
ent logic — it  is  the  awe-inspiring  catastrophe  of  a  two- 
thousand-year  training  in  truth,  which  finally  forbids  itself 
the  lie  of  the  belief  in  God.  (The  same  course  of  develop- 
ment in  India — quite  independently,  and  consequently  of 
some  demonstrative  value — the  same  ideal  driving  to  the 
same  conclusion  the  decisive  point  reached  five  hundred 
years  before  the  European  era,  or  more  precisely  at  the 
time  of  Buddha — it  started  in  the  Sankhyam  philosophy, 
and  then  this  was  popularised  through  Buddha,  and  made 
into  a  religion.) 

What,  I  put  the  question  with  all  strictness,  has  really 
triumphed  over  the  Christian  God?  The  answer  stands 
in  my  Joyful  Wisdom,  Aph.  357:  "the  Christian  morality 
itself,  the  idea  of  truth,  taken  as  it  was  with  increasing 
seriousness,  the  confessor-subtlety  of  the  Christian  con- 
science translated  and  sublimated  into  the  scientific  con- 
science into  intellectual  cleanness  at  any  price.  Regard- 
ing Nature  as  though  it  were  a  proof  of  the  goodness  and 
guardianship  of  God;  interpreting  history  in  honour  of  a 
divine  reason,  as  a  constant  proof  of  a  moral  order  of  the 
world  and  a  moral  teleology;  explaining  our  own  personal 
experiences,  as  pious  men  have  for  long  enough  explained 
them,  as  though  every  arrangement,  every  nod,  every  sin- 
gle thing  were  invented  and  sent  out  of  love  for  the  sal- 
vation of  the  soul;  all  this  is  now  done  away  with,  all  this 
has  the  conscience  against  it,  and  is  regarded  by  every 


176  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

subtler  conscience  as  disreputable,  dishonourable,  as  lying, 
feminism,  weakness,  cowardice — by  means  of  this  severity, 
if  by  means  of  anything  at  all,  are  we,  in  sooth,  good 
Europeans  and  heirs  of  Europe's  longest  and  bravest  self- 
.  ry."  .  .  .  All  great  things  go  to  ruin  by  reason  of 
themselves,  by  reason  of  an  act  of  self -dissolution:  so 
wills  the  law  of  life,  the  law  of  necessary  "self-mastery" 
even  in  the  essence  of  life — ever  is  the  law-giver  finally 
exposed  to  the  cry,  "patere  legem  quam  ipse  tulisti" ;  in 
thus  wise  did  Christianity  go  to  ruin  as  a  dogma,  through 
its  own  morality;  in  thus  wise  must  Christianity  go  again 
to  ruin  to-day  as  a  morality — we  are  standing  on  the 
threshold  of  this  event.  After  Christian  truthfulness  has 
drawn  one  conclusion  after  the  other,  it  finally  draws  its 
strongest  conclusion,  its  conclusion  against  itself;  this, 
however,  happens,  when  it  puts  the  question,  "what  is  the 
meaning  of  every  will  for  truth?"  And  here  again  do  I 
touch  on  my  problem,  on  our  problem,  my  unknown 
friends  (for  as  yet  /  know  of  no  friends) :  what  sense  has 
our  whole  being,  if  it  does  not  mean  that  in  our  own  selves 
that  will  for  truth  has  come  to  its  own  consciousness  as  a 
problem/ — By  reason  of  this  attainment  of  self-conscious- 
00  the  part  of  the  will  for  truth,  morality  from  hence- 
ard — there  is  no  doubt  about  it — goes  to  pieces:  this 
la  that  put  hundred-act  play  that  is  reserved  for  the 
next  two  centuries  of  Europe,  the  most  terrible,  the  most 
mysterious,  and  perhaps  also  the  most  hopeful  of  all 
plays. 

28. 

If  you  except  the  ascetic  ideal,  man,  the  animal  man 


ASCETIC  IDEALS  177 

had  no  meaning.  His  existence  on  earth  contained  no 
end;  "What  is  the  purpose  of  man  at  all?"  was  a  question 
without  an  answer;  the  will  for  man  and  the  world  was 
lacking;  behind  every  great  human  destiny  rang  as  a  re- 
frain a  still  greater  "Vanity!"  The  ascetic  ideal  simply 
means  this:  that  something  was  lacking,  that  a  tremend- 
ous void  encircled  man — he  did  not  know  how  to  justify 
himself,  to  explain  himself,  to  affirm  himself,  he  suffered 
from  the  problem  of  his  own  meaning.  He  suffered  also 
in  other  ways,  he  was  in  the  main  a  diseased  animal ;  but 
his  problem  was  not  suffering  itself,  but  the  lack  of  an 
answer  to  that  crying  question,  "To  what  purpose  do  we 
suffer?"  Man,  the  bravest  animal  and  the  one  most  in- 
ured to  suffering,  does  not  repudiate  suffering  in  itself:  he 
wills  it,  he  even  seeks  it  out,  provided  that  he  is  shown  a 
meaning  for  it,  a  purpose  of  suffering.  Not  suffering,  but 
the  senselessness  of  suffering  was  the  curse  which  till  then 
lay  spread  over  humanity — and  the  ascetic  ideal  gave  it 
a  meaning!  It  was  up  till  then  the  only  meaning;  but  any 
meaning  is  better  than  no  meaning;  the  ascetic  ideal  was 
in  that  connection  the  "jaute  de  mieux"  par  excellence  that 
existed  at  that  time.  In  that  ideal  suffering  found  an  ex- 
planation; the  tremendous  gap  seemed  filled;  the  door  to 
all  suicidal  Nihilism  was  closed.  The  explanation — there 
is  no  doubt  about  it — brought  in  its  train  new  suffering, 
deeper,  more  penetrating,  more  venomous,  gnawing  more 
brutally  into  life:  it  brought  all  suffering  under  the  per- 
spective of  guilt;  but  in  spite  of  all  that — man  was  saved 
thereby,  he  had  a  meaning,  and  from  henceforth  was  no 
more  like  a  leaf  in  the  wind,  a  shuttle-cock  of  chance,  of 
nonsense,  he  could  now  "will"  something — absolutely  im- 


j  78  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

material  to  what  end,  to  what  purpose,  with  what  means 
he  wished:  the  will  itself  was  saved.  It  is  absolutely  im- 
possible to  disguise  what  in  point  of  fact  is  made  clear  by 
complete  will  that  has  taken  its  direction  from  the 
ascetic  ideal:  this  hate  of  the  human,  and  even  more  of 
the  animal,  and  more  still  of  the  material,  this  horror  of 
the  senses,  of  reason  itself,  this  fear  of  happiness  and 
beauty,  this  desire  to  get  right  away  from  all  illusion, 
change,  growth,  death,  wishing  and  even  desiring — all 
this  means — let  us  have  the  courage  to  grasp  it — a  will 
for  Nothingness,  a  will  opposed  to  life,  a  repudiation  of 
the  most  fundamental  conditions  of  life,  but  it  is  and  re- 
mains a  will! — and  to  say  at  the  end  that  which  I  said  at 
the  beginning — man  will  wish  Nothingness  rather  than 
not  wish  at  all. 


PEOPLES  AND  COUNTRIES. 
Translated  by  J.  M.  KENNEDY. 


(The  following  twenty-seven  fragments  were  intended  by 
Nietzsche  to  form  a  supplement  to  Chapter  VIII  of  Beyond 
Good  and  Evil,  dealing  with  Peoples  and  Countries.) 


I. 


The  Europeans  now  imagine  themselves  as  representing, 
in  the  main,  the  highest  types  of  men  on  earth. 


A  characteristic  of  Europeans:  inconsistency  between 
word  and  deed;  the  Oriental  is  true  to  himself  in  daily 
life.  How  the  European  has  established  colonies  is  ex- 
plained by  his  nature,  which  resembles  that  of  a  beast  of 
prey. 

This  inconsistency  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  Chris- 
tianity has  abandoned  the  class  from  which  it  sprang. 

This  is  the  difference  between  us  and  the  Hellenes: 
their  morals  grew  up  among  the  governing  castes.  Thucy- 
dides'  morals  are  the  same  as  those  that  exploded  every- 
where with  Plato. 

179 


180  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

Attempts  towards  honesty  at  the  Renaissance,  for  ex- 
ample: always  for  the  benefit  of  the  arts.  Michael  Ange- 
lo's  conception  of  God  as  the  "Tyrant  of  the  World"  was 
an  honest  one. 


I  rate  Michael  Angelo  higher  than  Raphael,  because, 
through  all  the  Christian  clouds  and  prejudices  of  his 
time,  he  saw  the  ideal  of  a  culture  nobler  than  the  Christo- 
Raphaelian:  whilst  Raphael  truly  and  modestly  glorified 
(inly  the  values  handed  down  to  him,  and  did  not  carry 
within  himself  any  inquiring,  yearning  instincts.  Michael 
Angelo,  on  the  other  hand,  saw  and  felt  the  problem  of 
the  law-giver  of  new  values:  the  problem  of  the  conqueror 
made  perfect,  who  first  had  to  subdue  the  ''hero  within 
himself,"  the  man  exalted  to  his  highest  pedestal,  master 
even  of  his  pity,  who  mercilessly  shatters  and  annihilates 
everything  that  does  not  bear  his  own  stamp,  shining  in 
Olympian  divinity.  Michael  Angelo  was  naturally  only 
at  certain  moments  so  high  and  so  far  beyond  his  age  and 
Christian  Europe;  for  the  most  part  he  adopted  a  conde- 
iing  attitude  towards  the  eternal  feminine  in  Christi- 
anity; it  would  seem,  indeed,  that  in  the  end  he  broke 
D  before  her,  and  gave  up  the  ideal  of  his  most  in- 
spired hours.  It  was  an  ideal  which  only  a  man  in  the 
t  and  highest  vigour  of  life  could  bear;  but  not  a 
man  advanced  in  years!  Indeed,  he  would  have  had  to 
demolish  Christianity  with  his  ideal!  But  he  was  not 
thinker  and  philosopher  enough  for  that.  Perhaps  Leon- 
I  Vinci  alone  of  those  artists  had  a  really  super- 


PEOPLES  AND  COUNTRIES  181 

Christian  outlook.  He  knows  the  East,  the  "land  of 
dawn,"  within  himself  as  well  as  without  himself.  There 
is  something  super-European  and  silent  in  him:  a  charac- 
teristic of  every  one  who  has  seen  too  wide  a  circle  of 
things  good  and  bad. 


4- 


How  much  we  have  learnt  and  learnt  anew  in  fifty 
years!  The  whole  Romantic  School  with  its  belief  in  "the 
people"  is  refuted!  No  Homeric  poetry  as  "popular" 
poetry!  No  deification  of  the  great  powers  of  Nature! 
No  deduction  from  language-relationship  to  race-relation- 
ship! No  "intellectual  contemplations"  of  the  supernat- 
ural!    No  truth  enshrouded  in  religion! 

The  problem  of  truthfulness  is  quite  a  new  one.  I  am 
astonished.  From  this  standpoint  we  regard  such  natures 
as  Bismarck  as  culpable  out  of  carelessness,  such  as  Rich- 
ard Wagner  out  of  want  of  modesty;  we  would  condemn 
Plato  for  his  pia  fraus,  Kant  for  the  derivation  of  his 
Categorical  Imperative,  his  own  belief  certainly  not  hav- 
ing come  to  him  from  this  source. 

Finally,  even  doubt  turns  against  itself:  doubt  in  doubt. 
And  the  question  as  to  the  value  of  truthfulness  and  its 
extent  lies  there. 


What  I  observe  with  pleasure  in  the  German  is  his 
Mephistophelian  nature;  but,  to  tell  the  truth,  one  must 
have  a  higher  conception  of  Mephistopheles  than  Goethe 


1 82  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

had,  who  found  it  necessary  to  diminish  his  Mephisto- 
pheles  in  order  to  magnify  his  "inner  Faust."  The  true 
German  Mephistopheles  is  much  more  dangerous,  bold, 
■wicked,  and  cunning,  and  consequently  more  open- 
hearted:  remember  the  nature  of  Frederick  the  Great,  or 
of  that  much  greater  Frederick,  the  Hohenstaufen,  Fred- 
erick II. 

The  real  German  Mephistopheles  crosses  the  Alps,  and 
believes  that  everything  there  belongs  to  him.  Then  he 
recovers  himself,  like  Winckelmann,  like  Mozart.  He 
looks  upon  Faust  and  Hamlet  as  caricatures,  invented  to 
be  laughed  at,  and  upon  Luther  also.  Goethe  had  his  good 
German  moments,  when  he  laughed  inwardly  at  all  these 
things.    But  then  he  fell  back  again  into  his  cloudy  moods. 


6. 


Perhaps  the  Germans  have  only  grown  up  in  a  wrong 
climate!  There  is  something  in  them  that  might  be  Hel- 
lenic!— something  that  is  awakened  when  they  are  brought 
into  touch  with  the  South — Winckelmann,  Goethe,  Mo- 
zart. We  should  not  forget,  however,  that  we  are  still 
young.  Luther  is  still  our  last  event;  our  last  book  is  still 
the  Bible.  The  Germans  have  never  yet  "moralised." 
Also,  the  very  food  of  the  Germans  was  their  doom:  its 
consequence,  Philistinism. 


The  Germans  are  a  dangerous  people:  they  are  experts 
at  inventing  intoxicants.  Gothic,  rococo  (according  to 
Semper),  the  historical  sense  and  exoticism,  Hegel,  Rich- 


PEOPLES  AND  COUNTRIES  183 

ard  Wagner — Leibniz,  too  (dangerous  at  the  present  day) 
— (they  even  idealised  the  serving  soul  as  the  virtue  of 
scholars  and  soldiers,  also  as  the  simple  mind).  The 
Germans  may  well  be  the  most  composite  people  on  earth. 
"The  people  of  the  Middle,"  the  inventors  of  porcelain, 
and  of  a  kind  of  Chinese  breed  of  Privy  Councillor. 


8. 


The  smallness  and  baseness  of  the  German  soul  were 
not  and  are  not  consequences  of  the  system  of  small  states; 
for  it  is  well  known  that  the  inhabitants  of  much  smaller 
states  were  proud  and  independent:  and  it  is  not  a  large 
state  per  se  that  makes  souls  freer  and  more  manly.  The 
man  whose  soul  obeys  the  slavish  command:  ''Thou  shalt 
and  must  kneel!"  in  whose  body  there  is  an  involuntary 
bowing  and  scraping  to  titles,  orders,  gracious  glances 
from  above — well,  such  a  man  in  an  "Empire"  will  only 
bow  all  the  more  deeply  and  lick  the  dust  more  fervently 
in  the  presence  of  the  greater  sovereign  than  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  lesser:  this  cannot  be  doubted.  We  can  still 
see  in  the  lower  classes  of  Italians  that  aristocratic  self- 
sufficiency;  manly  discipline  and  self-confidence  still  form 
a  part  of  the  long  history  of  their  country:  these  are  vir- 
tues which  once  manifested  themselves  before  their  eyes. 
A  poor  Venetian  gondolier  makes  a  far  better  figure  than 
a  Privy  Councillor  from  Berlin,  and  is  even  a  better  man 
in  the  end — any  one  can  see  this.    Just  ask  the  women. 


Most  artists,  even  some  of  the  greatest  (including  the 


1 84  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

historians)  have  up  to  the  present  belonged  to  the  serving 
classes  (whether  they  serve  people  of  high  position  or 
princes  or  women  or  "the  masses"),  not  to  speak  of  their 
dependence  upon  the  Church  and  upon  moral  law.  Thus 
Rubens  portrayed  the  nobility  of  his  age;  but  only  accord- 
in  g  to  their  vague  conception  of  taste,  not  according  to 
his  own  measure  of  beauty — on  the  whole,  therefore, 
against  his  own  taste.    Van  Dyck  was  nobler  in  this  re- 

■  ct:  who  in  all  those  whom  he  painted  added  a  certain 
amount  of  what  he  himself  most  highly  valued:  he  did 
not  descend  from  himself,  but  rather  lifted  up  others  to 
himself  when  he  "rendered." 

The  slavish  humility  of  the  artist  to  his  public  (as  Se- 
bastian Bach  has  testified  in  undying  and  outrageous 
words  in  the  dedication  of  his  High  Mass)  is  perhaps 
more  difficult  to  perceive  in  music;  but  it  is  all  the  more 
deeply  engrained.  A  hearing  would  be  refused  me  if  I 
endeavoured  to  impart  my  views  on  this  subject.  Chopin 
possesses  distinction,  like  Van  Dyck.  The  disposition  of 
Beethoven  is  that  of  a  proud  peasant;  of  Haydn,  that  of 
a  proud  servant.  Mendelssohn,  too,  possesses  distinction 
— like  Goethe,  in  the  most  natural  way  in  the  world. 


10. 


We  could  at  any  time  have  counted  on  the  fingers  of 

one  hand  those  German  learned  men  who  possessed  wit: 

the  remainder  have  understanding,  and  a  few  of  them, 

happily,    that    famous    "childlike    character"    which    di- 

•  .  .  It  is  our  privilege:  with  this  "divination"  Ger- 

irnce  has  discovered  some  things  which  we  can 


PEOPLES  AND  COUNTRIES  185 

hardly  conceive  of,  and  which,  after  all,  do  not  exist,  per- 
haps. It  is  only  the  Jews  among  the  Germans  who  do  not 
"divine"  like  them. 

11. 

As  Frenchmen  reflect  the  politeness  and  esprit  of  French 
society,  so  do  Germans  reflect  something  of  the  deep,  pen- 
sive earnestness  of  their  mystics  and  musicians,  and  also 
of  their  silly  childishness,  The  Italian  exhibits  a  great 
deal  of  republican  distinction  and  art,  and  can  show  him- 
self to  be  noble  and  proud  without  vanity. 

12. 

A  larger  number  of  the  higher  and  better-endowed  men 
will,  I  hope,  have  in  the  end  so  much  self-restraint  as  to 
be  able  to  get  rid  of  their  bad  taste  for  affectation  and 
sentimental  darkness,  and  to  turn  against  Richard  Wagner 
as  much  as  against  Schopenhauer.  These  two  Germans 
are  leading  us  to  ruin;  they  flatter  our  dangerous  quali- 
ties. A  stronger  future  is  prepared  for  us  in  Goethe, 
Beethoven,  and  Bismarck  than  in  these  racial  aberrations. 
We  have  had  no  philosophers  yet. 

13- 

The  peasant  is  the  commonest  type  of  noblesse,  for  he 
is  dependent  upon  himself  most  of  all.  Peasant  blood  is 
still  the  best  blood  in  Germany — for  example,  Luther, 
Niebuhr,  Bismarck. 


[86  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

Bismarck  a  Slav.  Let  any  one  look  upon  the  face  of 
Germans.  Everything  that  had  manly,  exuberant  blood 
in  it  went  abroad.  Over  the  smug  populace  remaining, 
the  slave-souled  people,  there  came  an  improvement  from 
abroad,  especially  by  a  mixture  of  Slavonic  blood. 

The  Brandenburg  nobility  and  the  Prussian  nobility  in 
general  (and  the  peasant  of  certain  North  German  dis- 
tricts i ,  comprise  at  present  the  most  manly  natures  in 
Germany. 

That  the  manliest  men  shall  rule:  this  is  only  the  natural 
order  of  things. 


14. 


The  future  of  German  culture  rests  with  the  sons  of 
the  Prussian  officers. 

IS- 

There  has  always  been  a  want  of  wit  in  Germany,  and 
mediocre  heads  attain  there  to  the  highest  honours,  be- 
cause even  they  are  rare.  What  is  most  highly  prized  is 
diligence  and  perseverance  and  a  certain  cold-blooded, 
critical  outlook,  and,  for  the  sake  of  such  Qualities,  Ger- 
man scholarship  and  the  German  military  system  have 
become  paramount  in  Europe. 


16. 

rliaments  may  be  very  useful  to  a  strong  and  versa- 
tile Btatesman:  he  has  something  there  to  rely  upon  (every 


PEOPLES  AND  COUNTRIES  187 

such  thing  must,  however,  be  able  to  resist! ) — upon  which 
he  can  throw  a  great  deal  of  responsibility.  On  the  whole, 
however,  I  could  wish  that  the  counting  mania  and  the 
superstitious  belief  in  majorities  were  not  established  in 
Germany,  as  with  the  Latin  races,  and  that  one  could 
finally  invent  something  new  even  in  politics!  It  is  sense- 
less and  dangerous  to  let  the  custom  of  universal  suffrage 
— which  is  still  but  a  short  time  under  cultivation,  and 
could  easily  be  uprooted — take  a  deeper  root:  whilst,  of 
course,  its  introduction  was  merely  an  expedient  to  steer 
clear  of  temporary  difficulties. 

17. 

Can  any  one  interest  himself  in  this  German  Empire? 
Where  is  the  new  thought?  Is  it  only  a  new  combination 
of  power?  All  the  worse,  if  it  does  not  know  its  own  mind. 
Peace  and  laisser  alter  are  not  types  of  politics  for  which 
I  have  any  respect.  Ruling,  and  helping  the  highest 
thoughts  to  victory — the  only  things  that  can  make  me 
interested  in  Germany.  England's  small-mindedness  is 
the  great  danger  now  on  earth.  I  observe  more  inclina- 
tion towards  greatness  in  the  feelings  of  the  Russian  Nihi- 
lists than  in  those  of  the  English  Utilitarians.  We  require 
an  intergrowth  of  the  German  and  Slav  races,  and  we  re- 
quire, too,  the  cleverest  financiers,  the  Jews,  for  us  to 
become  masters  of  the  world. 

(a)  The  sense  of  reality. 

(b)  A  giving-up  of  the  English  principle  of  the  people's 
right  of  representation.  We  require  the  representation  of 
the  great  interests. 


,88  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

We  require  an  unconditional  union  with  Russia, 
.    .  with  a  mutual  plan  of  action  which  shall  not  per- 
mit any  English  schemata  to  obtain  the  mastery  in  Russia. 
No  American  future! 

( d)  A  national  system  of  politics  is  untenable,  and  em- 
barrassment by  Christian  views  is  a  very  great  evil.  In 
Europe  all  sensible  people  are  sceptics,  whether  they  say 
so  or  not. 


18. 


I  >ee  over  and  beyond  all  these  national  wars,  new  "em- 
pires," and  whatever  else  lies  in  the  foreground.    What  I 
am  concerned  with — for  I  see  it  preparing  itself  slowly  and 
tatingly — is  the  United  Europe.    It  was  the  only  real 
.,  the  one  impulse  in  the  souls,  of  all  the  broad-minded 
and  deep-thinking  men  of  this  century — this  preparation 
of  a  new  synthesis,  and  the  tentative  effort  to  anticipate 
the  future  of  "the  European."    Only  in  their  weaker  mo- 
ments, or  when  they  grew  old,  did  they  fall  back  again 
into  the  national  narrowness  of  the  "Fatherlanders" — 
then  they  were  once  more  "patriots."    I  am  thinking  of 
men  like  Napoleon,  Hcinrich  Heine,  Goethe,  Beethoven, 
dhal,  Schopenhauer.     Perhaps  Richard  Wagner  like- 
:s  to  their  number,   concerning  whom,   as  a 
successful  type  of  German  obscurity,  nothing  can  be  said 
without  some  such  ''perhaps.-' 

But  to  the  help  of  such  minds  as  feel  the  need  of  a  new 

unity   there   comes  a   great   explanatory   economic    fact: 

the  small  States  of  Europe — I  refer  to  all  our  present 

and  "empires"— will  in  a  short  time  become 


PEOPLES  AND  COUNTRIES  189 

economically  untenable,  owing  to  the  mad,  uncontrolled 
struggle  for  the  possession  of  local  and  international  trade. 
Money  is  even  now  compelling  European  nations  to 
amalgamate  into  one  Power.  In  order,  however,  that  Eu- 
rope may  enter  into  the  battle  for  the  mastery  of  the 
world  with  good  prospects  of  victory  (it  is  easy  to  per- 
ceive against  whom  this  battle  will  be  waged),  she  must 
probably  "come  to  an  understanding"  with  England.  The 
English  colonies  are  needed  for  this  struggle,  just  as  much 
as  modern  Germany,  to  play  her  new  role  of  broker  and 
middleman,  requires  the  colonial  possessions  of  Holland. 
For  no  one  any  longer  believes  that  England  alone  is  strong 
enough  to  continue  to  act  her  old  part  for  fifty  years 
more;  the  impossibility  of  shutting  out  homines  novi  from 
the  government  will  ruin  her,  and  her  continual  change 
of  political  parties  is  a  fatal  obstacle  to  the  carrying  out 
of  any  tasks  which  require  to  be  spread  out  over  a  long 
period  of  time.  A  man  must  to-day  be  a  soldier  first  and 
foremost  that  he  may  not  afterwards  lose  his  credit  as  a 
merchant.  Enough ;  here,  as  in  other  matters,  the  coming 
century  will  be  found  following  in  the  footsteps  of  Na- 
poleon— the  first  man,  and  the  man  of  greatest  initiative 
and  advanced  views,  of  modern  times.  For  the  tasks  of 
the  next  century,  the  methods  of  popular  representation 
and  parliaments  are  the  most  inappropriate  imaginable. 


19. 


The  condition  of  Europe  in  the  next  century  will  once 
again  lead  to  the  breeding  of  manly  virtues,  because  men 
will  live  in  continual  danger.     Universal  military  service 


i go  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

ifl  already  the  curious  antidote  which  we  possess  for  the 
effeminacy  of  democratic  ideas,  and  it  has  grown  up  out 
of  the  struggle  of  the  nations.  (Nation — men  who  speak 
one  language  and  read  the  same  newspapers.  These  men 
call  themselves  "nations,"  and  would  far  too  readily 
trace  their  descent  from  the  same  source  and  through  the 
same  history;  which,  however,  even  with  the  assistance  of 
the  most  malignant  lying  in  the  past,  they  have  not  suc- 
ceeded in  doing.) 


20. 


What  quagmires  and  mendacity  must  there  be  about  if 
it  is  possible,  in  the  modern  European  hotch-potch,  to 
raise  questions  of  "race"!  (It  being  premised  that  the 
origin  of  such  writers  is  not  in  Horneo  and  Borneo.) 


21. 


Maxim:  To  associate  with  no  man  who  takes  any  part 
in  the  mendacious  race  swindle. 


22. 

With  the  freedom  of  travel  now  existing,  groups  of  men 
of  the  same  kindred  can  join  together  and  establish  com- 
munal habits  and  customs.  The  overcoming  of  "na- 
tions." 

23- 
To  make  Europe  a  centre  of  culture,  national  stupidi- 


PEOPLES  AND  COUNTRIES  191 

ties  should  not  make  us  blind  to  the  fact  that  in  the  higher 
regions  there  is  already  a  continuous  reciprocal  depend- 
ence. France  and  German  philosophy.  Richard  Wagner 
and  Paris  (1830-50).  Goethe  and  Greece.  All  things  are 
impelled  towards  a  synthesis  of  the  European  past  in  the 
highest  types  of  mind. 

24. 

Mankind  has  still  much  before  it — how,  generally  speak- 
ing, could  the  ideal  be  taken  from  the  past?  Perhaps 
merely  in  relation  to  the  present,  which  latter  is  possibly 
a  lower  region. 

25- 

This  is  our  distrust,  which  recurs  again  and  again ;  our 
care,  which  never  lets  us  sleep;  our  question,  which  no 
one  listens  to  or  wishes  to  listen  to ;  our  Sphinx,  near  which 
there  is  more  than  one  precipice:  we  believe  that  the  men 
of  present-day  Europe  are  deceived  in  regard  to  the  things 
which  we  love  best,  and  a  pitiless  demon  (no,  not  pitiless, 
only  indifferent  and  puerile) — plays  with  our  hearts  and 
their  enthusiasm,  as  it  may  perhaps  have  already  played 
with  everything  that  lived  and  loved ;  I  believe  that  every- 
thing which  we  Europeans  of  to-day  are  in  the  habit  of 
admiring  as  the  values  of  all  these  respected  things  called 
"humanity,"  "mankind,"  "sympathy,"  "pity,"  may  be  of 
some  value  as  the  debilitation  and  moderating  of  certain 
powerful  and  dangerous  primitive  impulses.  Nevertheless, 
in  the  long  run  all  these  things  are  nothing  else  than  the 


i92  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  MORALS 

belittlement  of  the  entire  type  "man,"  his  mediocrisation, 
if  in  such  a  desperate  situation  I  may  make  use  of  such 
a  desperate  expression.  I  think  that  the  commedia 
umana  for  an  epicurean  spectator-god  must  consist  in 
this:  that  the  Europeans,  by  virtue  of  their  growing  moral- 
ity, believe  in  all  their  innocence  and  vanity  that  they  are 
rising  higher  and  higher,  whereas  the  truth  is  that  they  are 
sinking  lower  and  lower — i.e.,  through  the  cultivation  of  all 
the  virtues  which  are  useful  to  a  herd,  and  through  the 
repression  of  the  other  and  contrary  virtues  which  give  rise 
to  a  new,  higher,  stronger,  masterful  race  of  men — the 
fir>t-named  virtues  merely  develop  the  herd-animal  in 
man  and  stabilitate  the  animal  "man,"  for  until  now  man 
has  been  "the  animal  as  yet  unstabilitated." 


26/ 


Genius  and  Epoch. — Heroism  is  no  form  of  selfish- 
ness, for  one  is  shipwrecked  by  it.  .  .  .  The  direction  of 
power  is  often  conditioned  by  the  state  of  the  period  in 
which  the  great  man  happens  to  be  born;  and  this  fact 
brings  about  the  superstition  that  he  is  the  expression  of 
ime.  Hut  this  same  power  could  be  applied  in  sev- 
eral different  ways;  and  between  him  and  his  time  there 
is  always  this  difference:  that  public  opinion  always  wor- 
ships the  herd  instinct, — i.e.,  the  instinct  of  the  weak, — 
while  he,  the  strong  man,  fights  for  strong  ideals. 

27. 

The  fate  now  overhanging  Europe  is  simply  this:  that  it 


PEOPLES  AND  COUNTRIES  193 

is  exactly  her  strongest  sons  that  come  rarely  and  late  to 
the  spring-time  of  their  existence;  that,  as  a  rule,  when 
they  are  already  in  their  early  youth  they  perish,  sad- 
dened, disgusted,  darkened  in  mind,  just  because  they 
have  already,  with  the  entire  passion  of  their  strength, 
drained  to  the  dregs  the  cup  of  disillusionment,  which  in 
our  days  means  the  cup  of  knowledge,  and  they  would  not 
have  been  the  strongest  had  they  not  also  been  the  most 
disillusioned.  For  that  is  the  test  of  their  power — they 
must  first  of  all  rise  out  of  the  illness  of  their  epoch  to 
reach  their  own  health.  A  late  spring-time  is  their  mark 
of  distinction;  also,  let  us  add,  late  merriment,  late  folly, 
the  late  exuberance  of  joy!  For  this  is  the  danger  of 
to-day:  everything  that  we  loved  when  we  were  young 
has  betrayed  us.  Our  last  love — the  love  which  makes  us 
acknowledge  her,  our  love  for  Truth — let  us  take  care  that 
she,  too,  does  not  betray  us! 


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Complete  List  of  Titles 

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A  MODERN  BOOK  OF  CRITICISMS  (81)  Edited  with  an 

Introduction  by  LUDWIG  LEWISOHN 
ANDERSON,  SHERWOOD   (1876-        ) 

Winesburg,  Ohio,  (104) 
ANDREYEV,  LEONID  (1871-        ) 

The  Seven  That  Were  Hanged  and  The  Red  Laugh  (45) 
Introduction  by  THOMAS  SELTZER 
ATHERTON,  GERTRUDE   (1859-     ) 

Rezanov  (71)  Introduction  by  WILLIAM  MARION  REEDY 
BALZAC,  HONORE  DE  (1799-1850) 

Short  Stories  (40) 
BAUDELAIRE,  PIERRE  CHARLES   (1821-1867) 

His  Prose  and  Poetry  (70) 
BEARDSLEY,  THE  ART  OF  AUBREY  (1872-1898) 

64  Black  and  White   Reproductions    (42)   Introduction  by 
ARTHUR  SYMONS 
BEERBOHM,  MAX  (1872-        ) 

Zuleika  Dobson  (50)  Introduction  by  FRANCIS  HACKETT 
BEST  GHOST  STORIES  (73) 

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BLAKE,  WILLIAM  (1757-1827) 

Poems    (91)    Edited   with   notes   by    WILLIAM    BUTLER 
YEATS 
BUTLER,  SAMUEL  (1835-1902) 

The  Way  of  All  Flesh  (13) 
CABELL,  JAMES  BRANCH 

Beyond  Life*  (25)  Introduction  by  GUY  HOLT 
CARPENTER,  EDWARD  (1844-         ) 

Love's  Coming  of  Age  (51) 
CHEKHOV,  ANTON  (1860-1904) 

Rothschild's  Fiddle  and  Thirteen  Other  Stories  (31) 
CHESTERTON,  G.  K.   (1874-        ) 

The  Man  Who  Was  Thursday  (35) 
CONTEMPORARY  SCIENCE  (99) 

Edited  with  an  Introduction  by  Dr.  BENJ.  HARROW 
CRANE,  STEPHEN   (1870-        ) 

Men,  Women  and  Boats  (102)   Introduction  by  VINCENT 
STARRETT 
D'ANNUNZIO,  GABRIELE  (1864-        ) 

The  Flame  of  Life  (65) 

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RASCOE 
DAVIDSON,  JOHN 

Poems  (60) 


Modern  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Books 


DAUDET,  ALPHONSE   (1840-1397) 

Sapho   (85)      In  same  volume  Prevost's  "  Manon  Lescaut " 
DOSTOYEVSKY,  FEDOK  (1821-1881) 

Poor  People   (10)   Introduction  by  THOMAS  SELTZER 
DOWSON,  ERNEST   (1867-1900) 

Poems  and  Prose  (74)  Introduction  by  ARTHUR  SYMOXS 
DREISER,  THEODORE 

Free    and     Other     Stories     (50)     Introduction    by    H.     L. 
MENCKEN 
DUNSANY,  LORD   (Edward  John  Plunkett)    (1878-        ) 

A  Dreamer's  Tales  (34)  Introduction  by  PADRIAC  COLUM 

Book  of  Wonder  (43) 
ELLIS,  HAVELOCK    (1859-        ) 

The  New  Spirit  (95)   Introduction  by  the  author 
EVOLUTION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT  (37) 

A   Symposium,   including   Essays   by    Haeckel,   Thomson, 
Weismann,  etc. 
FLAUBERT,  GUSTAVE  (1821-1880) 

Madame  Bovary  (28) 

The  Temptation  of  St.  Anthony  (92)     Translated  by  LAF- 
CADIO  HE  \RN 
FLEMING,  MARJORIE  (1803-1811) 

Marjorie  Fleming's  Book  (93)  Introduction  by  CLIFFORD 
SMYTH 
FRANCE,  ANATOLE  (1844-        ) 

The    Crime    of    Sylvestre    Bonnard    (22)      Introduction   by 
LAFCADIO  HEARN 

The    Queen    Pedauque     (110)       Introduction    by    JAMES 
BRANCH  CAT. ELL 

The  Red  Lily  (7) 

Thais  (67)   Introduction  by  HENDRIK  \Y.  VAN  LOON 
FRENSSEN,  GUSTAV   (1863-        ) 

John  Uhl  (101)  Introduction  by  LUDWIG  LEWISOHN 
GAUTIER,  THEOPHILE   (1811-1872) 

Mile,  de  Maupin  (53) 
GEORGE,  W.  L.   (1832-        ) 

A  Bed  of  Roses  (75)  Introduction  by  EDGAR  SALTUS 
GILBERT,  W.  S.   (1836-1911) 

The    Mikado,    The    Pirates    of    Penzance,    Iolanthe,    The 
Gondoliers,   (26)    Introduction  by  CLARENCE  DAY,  Jr. 
GISSING,  GEORGE,  (1857-1903) 

The  Private   Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft   (46)    Introduction 
by  PAUL  ELMER  MORE 
De  GONCOURT,  E.  and  J.  (1322-1896)    (1830-1870) 

Rente  Mauperin   (76)    Introduction  by  EMILE  ZOLA 
GORKY,  MAXIM   (1868-        ) 

Creatures  That  Once  Were  Men  and  Four  Other  Stories 
M8)  Introduction  br  G.  I-    CHESTERTON 


Modern  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Books 


HARDY,  THOMAS  (1840-        ) 

The  Mayor  of  Casterbridge   (17)   Introduction  by  JOYCE 
KILMER 
HECHT,  BEN 

Erik  Dorn  (29)  Introduction  by  BURTON  RASCOE 
HUDSON,  W.  H.   (1862-        ) 

Green    Mansions     (89)       Introduction    by    JOHN    GALS- 
WORTHY 
IBANEZ,  VICENTE  BLASCO    (1867-        ) 

The     Cabin     (69)       Introduction     by    JOHN     GARRETT 
UNDERHILL 
IBSEN,  HENRIK  (1828-1906) 

A  Doll's  House,  Ghosts,  An  Enemy  of  the  People   (6)  ; 
Hedda   Gabler,   Pillars   of   Society,   The   Master   Builder 

(36)   Introduction  by  H.  L.  MENCKEN 
The  Wild  Duck,  Rosmersholm,  The  League  of  Youth  (54) 
JAMES,  HENRY    (1843-1916) 

Daisy  Miller  and  An  International  Episode   (63) 
Introduction  by  WILLIAM   DEAN   HOWELLS 
KIPLING,  RUDYARD   (1865-        ) 

Soldiers  Three  (3) 
LATZKO,  ANDREAS  (1876-        ) 

Men  in  War  (88) 
LAWRENCE,  D.  H.  (1887-        ) 

Sons  and  Lovers  (109)   Introduction  by  JOHN  MAC/ 
LE      GALLIENNE,     ANTHOLOGY      OF      AMERICAN 
POETRY   (107)   Edited  with  an  introduction  by  RICHARD 
LE  GALLIENNE 
LOTI,  PIERRE   (1850-        ) 

Madame  Chrysantheme  (94) 
MACY,  JOHN  (1877-        ) 

The  Spirit  of  American  Literature  (56) 
MAETERLINCK,  MAURICE  (1862-        ) 

A   Miracle    of   St.   Antony,   Pelleas   and   Melisande,   The 
Death  of  Tintagiles,  Alladine  and  Palomides,  Interior, 
The  Intruder  (11) 
DeMAUPASSANT,  GUY  (1850-1893) 

Love  and  Other  Stories   (72)       Edited  and  translated  with 

an  Introduction  by  MICHAEL  MONAHAN 
Mademoiselle   Fifi,  and  Twelve   Other   Stories    (8);   Une 
Vie  (57)  Introduction  by  HENRY  JAMES 
MEREDITH,  GEORGE  (1828-1909) 

Diana   of  the   Crossways    (14)    Introduction  by  ARTHUR 
SYMONS 
MOLIERE 

Plays  (78)  Introduction  by  WALDO  FRANK 
MOORE,  GEORGE    (1853-        ) 

Confessions     of    a    Young     Man     (16)       Introduction    by 
FLOYD  DELL 


Modern  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Books 


MORRISON,  ARTHUR  (1863-        ) 

Tales    of    Mean    Streets     (100)       Introduction    by    H.    L. 
MENCKEN 
NIETZSCHE,  FRIEDRICH  (1844-1900) 

Thus     Spake     Zarathustra     (9)       Introduction    by     FRAU 

FOERSTER-NIETZSCHE 
Beyond  Good  and  Evil   (20)      Introduction  by  WILLARD 

HUN TINGTON  WRIGHT 
Genealogy  of  Morals  (62) 
O'NEILL,  EUGENE   (1888-) 

The  Moon  of  the  Carribbees  and  Six  Other  Plays  of  the 
Sea  (111)  Introduction  by  GEORGE  JEAN  NATHAN 
OUIDA 

In    a    Winter    City     (24)     Introduction    by    CARL    VAN 
VECHTEN 
PAINE,  THOMAS   (1737-1809) 

Selections    from    the    Writings    of    Thomas    Paine    (1C8) 
Edited  with  an  Introduction  by  CARL  VAN  DOREN 
PATER,  WALTER  (1839-1894) 
Marius  the  Epicurean   (90) 

The  Renaissance  (86)  Introduction  by  ARTHUR  SYMONS 
PEPYS',  SAMUEL;  DIARY  (103) 

Condeii-st-d.     Introduction   by   RICHARD   LE   GALLIEXNE 
PREVOST,  ANTOINE  FRANCOIS  (1697-1763) 

Manon  Lescaut  (85)   In  same  volume  with  Daudet's  Sapho 
PSYCHOANALYSIS,  AN  OUTLINE  OF  (66) 

A  Symposium  of  the  latest  expressions  by  the  leaders  of 
the  various  schools  of  the  new  psychology.     Edited  by 
J.  S.  VAN  TESLAAR 
RODIN,  THE  ART  OF  (1840-1917) 

64  Black  and  White   Reproductions    (41)    Introduction  by 
LOUIS  WEINBERG 
SCHNITZLER,  ARTHUR    (1S62-        ) 

Anatol,  Living  Hours,  The  Green  Cockatoo  (32) 

Introduction  by  ASHLEY  DUKES 
Bertha  Garlan  (39) 
SCHOPENHAUER,   ARTHUR    (1788-1860) 

Studies     in     Pessimism      (12)        Introduction     by     T.     B. 
SAUNDERS 
SHAW,  G.  B.   (1856-        ) 

An  Unsocial  Socialist  (15) 
SINCLAIR,    MAY 
The  Belfry  (68) 
STEPHENS,   JAMES 

Mary,  Mary  (30)   Introduction  by  PADRIAC  COLUM 
STEVENSON,  ROBERT  LOUIS  (1850-1894) 
Treasure   Island   (4) 

STIRNER,     MAX     (Johann     Caspar     Schmidt)     (1806-1859) 
The  Ego  and  His  Own  (49) 


Modern  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Books 


3TRINDBERG,  AUGUST  (1849-1912) 
Married  (2)   Introduction  by  THOMAS   SELTZER 
Miss  Julie,  The  Creditor,  The  Stronger  Woman,  Motherly 
Love,  Paria,  Simoon  (52) 
5UDERMANN,  HERMANN  (1857-) 

Dame  Care  (33) 
JWINBURNE,  ALGERNON   CHARLES    (1837-1909) 
Poems  (23)  Introduction  by  ERNEST  RHYS 
HOMPSON,  FRANCIS  (1859-1907) 
Complete  Poems  (38) 
^QLSTOY,  LEO  (1828-1910) 
Redemption  and   Two  Other  Plays    (77)    Introduction   by 

ARTHUR  HOPKINS 
The  Death  of  Ivan  Uyitch  and  Four  Other  Stories  (64) 
'URGENEV,  IVAN  (1818-1883) 
Fathers  and  Sons  (21)  Introduction  by  THOMAS  SELTZER 
Smoke  (80)  Introduction  by  JOHN  REED 
AN  LOON,  HENDRIK  WILLEM  (1882-        ) 
Ancient  Man  (105) 
ILLON  FRANCOIS  (1431-1461) 
Poems  (58)  Introduction  by  JOHN  PAYNE 
OLTAIRE,  (FRANCOIS  MARIE  AROUET)  (1694-1778) 
Candide  (47)  Introduction  by  PHILIP  LITTELL 
rELLS,  H.  G.  (1866-        ) 
Ann  Veronica  (27) 
The  War  in  the  Air  (5)  New  Preface  by  H.  G.  Wells  for 

this  edition 
HITMAN,  WALT  (1819-        ) 
Poems   (97)   Introduction  by  CARL  "SANDBURG 
ILDE,  OSCAR  (1859-1900) 

An  Ideal  Husband,  A  Woman  of  No   Importance    (84) 
Dorian  Gray   (1) 

Fairy  Tales  and  Poems  in  Prose  (61) 
ntentions   (96) 
poems  (19) 
alome,  The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest,  Lady  Winder- 
mere's  Fan   (83)    Introduction  by   EDGAR   SALTUS 
LSON,  WOODROW    (1856-        ) 

elected  Addresses  and   Public   Papers    (55)    Edited  with 
an  introduction  by  ALBERT  BUSHNELL  HART 
MAN  QUESTION,  THE  (59) 
^.  Symposium,  including  Essays  by  Ellen  Key,  Havelock 
Ellis,  G.  Lowes  Dickinson,  etc.     Edited  by  T.  R.  SMITH 
ATS,  W.  B.   (1865-        ) 
rish  Fairy  and  Folk  Tales  (44) 


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